Schism
by ShiniJekka
Summary: Can Daisuke and Ken keep their relationship alive when that which comes between them is.. Ken? Updated 5.05.04
1. From the deep

It amuses me to no end to hear that you think you're rid of me. That it's over. If there exists a type of amusement which is also rage, this would all the better pinpoint the roiling of my emotion.  
I have a lot of time to think, in this tight oblivion you found within yourself. The doorless prison wrought from your guilt. Time to consider what I should have done differently... the things I'll choose instead next time.  
Oh, I know you deny the existance of a "next time", but never forget which of us is the genius. You? You're a shell who finally looked, truly looked at his own soul and found it so frighteningly corrupt that you hastily shoved it away from yourself.  
Ken, my Ken. You never realized that corruption is delicious..  
Do you regret the fun we had together, or are you afraid of the way it felt to crush the weak beaneth the gauntlet of the strong?  
Occasionally I hear myself giggle. As I said, I have quite enough time to think in here. I believe that on some level, we're both quite mad: you, for simply having borne me. Myself, for my own existance.  
I can pinpoint nearly exactly the time and circumstance of when I became you.. rather, when I fell. The mighty, Herculean Kaiser to snivelling angst-ridden child. You believe it was the sacrifice of our Wormmon (who, after much deliberation, I realize I could have handled better -- there's a sore lack of lackeys who suffer from total devotion.)  
You would think it would be Wormmon, and you of course would be incorrect. You are no longer the genius.  
The Wormmon was the final straw, certainly. The last ounce upon us that caused the crack, the fissure, the eventual schism. But even before that.. was Daisuke.  
You don't even know yet, what he does to you. You're so skilled at repression (no doubt that little spore helped this talent evolve), that you don't even know when you're fooling yourself.. but down here? Under the surface, banished to your little inner dark ocean? I'm so fortunate to be privy to your darkest desires. I moniter your life like the worst of voyeurs, who watches not to see but for the perfect moment to jump in and control.  
And yes, sometimes I DO hear myself giggle, for you're setting yourself up so very splendidly. With no notion of the disaster before you, you further your shy, desperate advances toward his Courage and Friendship. Wishing to press yourself against him, to absorb the goodness he finds so easy, to hear him say that you're needed and wanted, and maybe to hear that it isn't your fault, after all.  
Some of us know better.  
Though, it is terribly entertaining when you become so shocked and delighted at his every favorable response. Of COURSE it is a favorable response. I foresaw this ages ago.  
We both got a little thrill when he rode us down that hill, and just as he was my downfall, I've no doubt that he will be the catalyst, the instigator to the moment I've been waiting for.  
You've buried me deep, my little one, but this close to him I can feel my own exhumation.  



	2. An Ache on Eternity

schism1

Schism ~ an adventure in shounen ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Necessary Disclaimer o'Goodness – I don't own this stuff. If I did I wouldn't be using such a cronk computer. I'd be flying high with some alienware, gigahertz processor.. ooh, the possibilities.. 

Author's Ramble – This took me forever, and I'm sorry. It took a very long time to be able to write in Ken's POV without it turning out to be pages and pages of nothing. For some reason he rambles in my head… if you doubt that, I have four pages of pure dribble lying around. I might post them some distant day. Kensuke ahoy!!

**************************

Chapter 1 – An Ache on Eternity

"So.. whatcha thinkin'?"

"Nothing in particular.. just.. thinking."

"You think too much." 

I raised an eyebrow and glanced to the side as Daisuke made a peculiar grunting noise, rolling onto his side. The grass beneath him flattened, and where he used to be was a curious mix of still-flat and struggling to rise again. There was a Daisuke imprint.

"I think too much?"

"You heard me," my boyfriend groused, poking my side with a callused finger. Both eyebrows were now elevated to a lofty expression of incredulity.

"Is this a matter of thinking too much in general," I asked, reaching down to take hold of his tanned finger with my own smooth, pale hand, "or just in comparison to you?"

He snickered softly, shaking his hand lightly in a slight attempt to release my grip, then grasped it with his other hand. 

My gaze strayed, down to where he held me, holding him.

"So what I should I do, then?"

"Duuuh," Daisuke replied in all his eloquence. "Think less."

"How much is too much?"

"_This_ much," he murmured, releasing my hand to tap my forehead. I blinked in surprise, eyes following his hand right up until the point of cross-eyed.

"What?"

"You've got lines."

"That's ridiculous," I splutter, rubbing my forehead. "I'm too young for wrinkles."

"Wrinkles ON wrinkles! You worry too much."

"I'm not worrying," I mutter indignantly, sitting up abruptly. Daisuke continues to look at me from the grass… I can feel clearly the weight of his russet gaze.

"You're always worrying," he sighs. "And always thinking."

"That's how I am, then." 

"I'll worry for you," he offers, tugging at my hand. I look down at him, and then slowly around ourselves.

The park isn't all that crowded, which is a surprise. If you're lucky enough to find any spot in Odaiba that hasn't yet reached its humanity saturation point, be sure to grab it. To find a spot as lovely as a hillside in a little grassy park borders on miracle. There are, total, maybe ten other people here, all spread about, walking dogs or reading on benches. There's one other couple, under the shade of a tree with a picnic basket.

"We ought to be in the shade, too," I declare suddenly. 

It must have been a mistake, because my Dai suddenly has something suspiciously akin to a triumphant smile.

"Whyyyy?" he draws out lazily.

"Because it's far too sunny out, and in case you hadn't noticed, it's getting hotter."

"Why, Ken!" He bats his eyelashes at me charmingly. "Are you… worrying?"

"I'm the one with fair skin here. Unless you want to spend the entire night rubbing aloe onto a second degree sunburn…"

His eyes practically light up. "Now THERE'S an idea," he cries, sitting up. "But I don't want you to hurt while I do it, so let's just change the aloe into whipped cream…"

From the sudden heat in my cheeks, I'm sure I looked like the victim of sunburn already. 

"Whipped cream doesn't help a sunburn," I say carefully, knowing I have a tendency to stutter when he takes this sudden shift into flirtatiously kinky.

"Then we'll have to try it out soon… say… now?"

I can't help but laugh, leaning against him and savoring the sheer _Daisukeness_ of it all. He smells of cinnamon and clove and a peculiar musk that I associate with that bomber jacket of his, though it's far too tepid a day for it.

"You're impossible, Dai," I murmur in his ear. He snickers back and slips an arm around my waist, and with a slight tug pulls us both back down to the grass.

"You only say that cos you think too much."

"Ne… Ken…"

"Mmmn?" The heat was making me drowsy. It may have been the close proximity of the love of my life, but I'm still shy now and then, so even to myself I say it's the heat.

"I had a real funny dream last night," he says.

One blink, and I suppress a shiver as my own nightmare rushes back to center stage of my mind. 

"Really?" I would rather hear about his than think about mine. I had nearly given Wormmon a heart attack this morning with all of my thrashing and groaning. He'd finally woken me up by jumping up and down on my face.

"Yeah." He's looking at me again, and I can't help but meet the gaze, as though his eyes hold gravity over mine. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours, though."

"I thought it was, 'I'll _show_ you mine...'"

He grins. "Well, that too, but we're in public."

"This inhibition is a first, for you," I mutter. "Why are you asking?"

"Because when you're real silent and weird like this that means something's upsetting you. It's Sunday so it wasn't school, which is normally it, and I don't think it was your folks, and I'm hoping beyond hell it wasn't me, so I figured maybe it was a dream. And when I said _I_ had one, you went real still and stuff, so I figured maybe I was right. So what was it?"

Sometimes I need to remember that my Daisuke is a genius in his own right. He has such a knack for reading people that occasionally I'm stuck between opening up to him and falling into his arms, or trying to draw the shutters closed a little tighter. It's hard not to shrink away from someone so open…

Someone so vividly alive that it's like looking straight into the sun.

"You… really want to know?" I ask, under my breath as though I don't want him to hear. When he hears, he'll assure me yes he does, and then I'll tell him merely for the reason that he is Daisuke.

There's a rustle, and suddenly he is all I can see, dominating my entire field of vision, propped over me with hands in the grass, straddling my hips. I can feel blood rushing straight into my face, a flush setting over my cheeks and rising to the tips of my ears.

"Maybe we should have moved into the shade," he whispers, eyes sliding over my face so slowly they must leave tracks. "You're so red…"

Yet I feel so frozen. My limbs have gone stiff, my heart beating desperately against my ribcage like a panicking bird looking for escape. With lips gone mysteriously numb, I manage somehow to tell him that it isn't sunburn.

He nods, chestnut hair bobbing about in its place, brushing over those ridiculous goggles given to him by Taichi. 

"I do really want to know."

A long pause, as I stare upwards at him. He gazes back, infinitely patient, but steadfast and determined. I could no sooner escape him than my own phantoms.

Ironic, considering that as of late he _was_ my escape.

"Alright, Dai. Alright."

As I tell him, I find myself fascinated by the disinterested and distant tone of my own voice. It's as though I'm lecturing on something that doesn't apply or affect me at all, when in reality I was speaking of that which had terrified me nearly every night this week. Things I haven't even told Wormmon about, yet. Dreams that I had been careful not to look full in the face, afraid of what I might remember about them.

"It's dark outside… it's dark everywhere… but it isn't nighttime. It's just … dark. I don't know where I am, at first, except it's the city and the sidewalk and it's cold… it's very cold. I'm wondering where I am, where Wormmon is… my parents, or the other Children… where you are, too, Daisuke. But no one's around at all; it's just all quiet and faded.

"And then there's a bit of movement to my left, I spin around to see someone dart around the corner of a building… I have to catch him… I have to stop him, before it's too late. If I can just catch him, none of what I know will happen, and it won't have been my fault. I run the corner and suddenly it's not just dark, it's BLACK, Daisuke… black and thick and shifting all around me, like an ocean. And he's in front of me. I can see light from somewhere glinting off the rim of his glasses, and the outline of his hair, and he grips me by the shoulders, shaking me until I can't see straight. 

"He's got something to say… something I need to hear. He's so insistent about it, so violently commanding, but before he can tell me what it is, there's a loud noise, and it isn't dark anymore… it's a sandstorm, and I'm lost in it, and I can't find him again… I'll never find him again."

My voice trails off, and I'm trying so hard to not think about how terrible it was, that it's the only thing on my mind. Tell yourself not to think of elephants and you'll get pachyderms on the brain, relentlessly. It hurts, to be thinking of this. There's a gnawing emptiness settled into the very marrow of my bones, down into my heart, and it's been there for so long that I only seem to notice it when it hurts more than usual. For all I know it'll be there until the end of my days. I have an ache on eternity.

Daisuke lays a hand on my shoulder, and I'm jolted back to the present by the sheer heat radiating from within him. He, too, seems surprised, glancing at the point of contact, eyebrows raising.

"You're freezing."

"… I'm disturbed," I reply slowly, pulling the words out carefully. 

"A dream like that, no wonder," he muses. "Any idea what it meant?"

"What it meant?"

"Who the person was? Where you were? What he was trying to say?"

I stared at the grass… rather, through it… letting my thoughts attempt to organize themselves. It had been in the city, at first, just the normal stretch of street outside my apartment. 

"I don't think where is important," I say, eyes listlessly watching the waver and bend of the grass stalks as I think harder. "It was just a street. What bothered me most is that I have no idea what he wants to tell me… and it seems so dreadfully important, Daisuke. I need to hear it."

"And there's another thing," my boyfriend huffs. "Who is _he_? You said you couldn't see but you seem to know anyway."

"I… it was dark, yeah… but… I could almost see, and at the very least it _felt_ like…"

"Like…?" He nudges me slightly, so that I look up at him. His deep eyes have blended into a sort of cherry chocolate color, offset by tiny sparks of light color. Fire opals.

"Osamu," I whisper, letting it slip out, so caught up in his eyes that I barely notice something I'd meant to keep hidden escape straight into the wind, into his ears, for him to mull over and decide upon.

I don't want him to think me unstable, which is an outright laugh. Daisuke knows me more than anyone, save for Wormmon, who's known me longer. But Dai… he's known me _closer_. 

I suppose I'm thinking too hard again, because he's staring at me with a peculiar mix of worry and exasperation.

"Your brother?" he finally says with a blink. "The, um… gone one?"

"I think so."

"Well, then he's telling you to lighten up!" Daisuke pokes me in the chest, almost sending me off-balance. 

"It seems more than that," I mutter dryly.

"C'mon, Ken, relax. Your bro would never keep you up all night just to haunt you. He isn't the type to haunt."

"The type?"

Daisuke nods emphatically. "Right. But I am."

Which takes me off-guard. 

"You are, what?"

"The type to haunt, of course! And at this rate I'm gonna have to, cos we have all this free time, just you an' me, and you're just moping around. In face, I can see it now… way down the road, you'll be lyin' in bed with your old man knickers on, thinking 'If only I'd paid more attention to Daisuke back when I was young and energetic. We could have had so much more whoopie…' And then there'll be a cool gust of wind and-"

"Wait, wait," I interrupt, laughing. "Whoopie?!"

"Yeah, whoopie! Now lemme finish. There'll be a cool gust of wind at the window and you'll look up and there's me, floating around like the sexy ghost I am."

He stood up at this point, waving his arms in the air and sucking in his cheeks to try to look gaunt and frightening. He looked like a shriveled squirrel.

"Daisuke, is there some sort of medication you should be on?"

"Quiet, I'm a ghost. Kee~eeeen… Whyyyyyy did you mope so much? Aaaaaall those wasted afternooooons… we could be kissing right nooooow…"

"Except that by 'now' you mean when you're a ghost."

"No," he says with a grin. "I mean NOW!"

I barely have time to blink as he leaps at me, a nice clean tackle. His fingers are searching up my sides for the tickle zones he discovered lately, but I'll have none of that. He's not impervious either.

Giggling like normal boys, we roll down the entire hill, covered in grass stains and breathless, and by the bottom I'm happy again.

Though it may just have been my imagination that someone else was giggling.

It must have been.

There was no one else there.

********************

The author walks to the roadside and carefully drives a sign into her lawn

**Muses wanted.**

More on the way.


	3. At My Heels, the Howling

(school scene, french lessons

Schism ~ an adventure in shounen ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Necessary Disclaimer o'Goodness – If you've been with us so far, you know I don't own these lovelies. Not even down to the last chibimon. Good thing, too, cos we're running outta meat to cook with over here… 

Author's Ramble – This one wasn't so hard to write, cos my notes extended at least this far. Once we move beyond, however, it's uncharted territory and no doubt surprises for both you and I…

Chapter 2 – At My Heels, the Howling… 

*********************

Linguistics. Speech. That which separates modern man from animal. Communication. The way the world works.

At the moment, the bane of my existence.

This class used to be simplicity in itself, just another sidetrack on the path toward Digital Domination. Some small section of my brain would stand up and proclaim "This is my realm, my companions, I shall handle it. The rest of you just keep working on those spiral plans…" and all would be well.

If I'm lucky, I won't blurt out a terrible swear when it's my turn.

This particular teacher enjoys the task of introducing one paragraph and then letting the class take turns transcribing it into different languages. Three desks ahead of me, Himiko was flaunting a perfect Italian accent. It sounded, to me, like a recipe.

"Il supervisore della casa era molto severo. Era, infatti, una persona di tale natura dura che le tempeste hanno scurito perpetuo il suo portello," she recites perfectly, and perches back onto her chair with a flurry of skirt and bounce of shiny purple ponytail.

"Bueno," the teacher compliments. The girl practically glows. 

And my doom creeps one desk closer.

"Ryuusuke. German." 

"Der Meister des Hauses war sehr stern. Er war …tatsächlich eine Person solcher rauher Natur, daß Stürme unaufhörlich …seine Tür verdunkelten…?" 

"Ausgezeichneter Job, Ryuusuke. Hiro, English."

My attention wanders, despite that now of all times I ought to be watching like a hawk, listening carefully to the inflections. Something outside keeps catching my eye, some flurry of movement from near the ostentatiously blue recycling bin… from the corner of my eye, faint glimmers, but whenever I try to see, it's gone.

Slightly strange, slightly infuriating but let it not be said that Ken Ichijouji is not a patient and determined person. There has to be a system to this; that persistent movement at the edge of vision wasn't just a figment of mine. It may be that it was there one moment, but not the next… else I have to look so suddenly that it doesn't get a chance to vanish. I just need to single out the formula.

Ahead of me, Hiro was finally stumbling through a long and painful English translation. The teacher rolls her eyes and asks him to repeat himself. I'm keeping half an ear to the result in case it would help me, come my turn. And I waited… waited…

… Almost…

"The master of the house was v-very stern. He was, in fact, a person of such …harsh nature that storms perpe… perpetually darkened his door."

"Much better, Hiro."

I snap my vision toward the bin, before the glimmer can vanish.

And very nearly fall out of my chair.

There was only a split second of visual contact before it was gone, but it was enough to spy dark blue hair, spiky ends shifting in a breeze, and a gaze framed by angular glasses.

A self-assured, casual smirk…

"Ken. In French, if you could."

I ignore her, staring out the window still, rising to my feet stiffly. It was impossible, of course, that I had seen what my eyes and mind had registered. Preposterous to the point that any sane man would direct his attention forward and sort through the French that was assembling in my brain like a line of martyred soldiers off to war. _"We haven't a chance, but Sarge wants us on the front lines, men." _

"Ken? Ichijouji-kun, daijoubu?"

Iie, Sensei, I think to myself. I am most certainly not.

Because I glanced out the window and saw my dead brother looking up at me.

Whispers were beginning to ripple through the students like wind over a field of wheat. I tear my gaze from the window, to the irritable teacher, to the door, to the chalkboard…

_A person of such harsh nature that storms perpetually darkened his door_

And vault my entire desk, running at full 'Rocket' speed out the door and down the hall, feet pounding and skidding around corners, my own progress echoing back to me from the cold cement surrounding of the academic purgatory I was suddenly fleeing. Some dry and still reasonable portion of my brain is defining for me the process of 'fugue', and sighing that I'd just furthered the belief that Infallible Ichijouji has lost more from his head than a stellar IQ.

I let it ramble. My brother had been outside, and he had been in my dreams for a week, now. I'm not going to miss this message any longer.

The school door bursts open as I shoulder into it and spill into the open air, sucking in greedy gasps of oxygen. A quick, desperate look all over, street to street, corner to corner, proves fruitless.

There's no one. Not a soul, not a departing back, not even a stray dog. I ran from my class like a lunatic to find an empty street. 

And I've left my bag behind, too. Absolutely terrific. Thank god I'd left Wormmon home today, since he was so tired this morning. I don't even want to go back in the front door, as far as my locker. 

I don't want to, and so I won't. Past all of the rules and regulations and social expectations, it suddenly occurs to me that it's as simple as that. I don't want to go back inside, and so I won't. I could go back home, and if that garnered a scolding, I could plead sickness.

It most likely won't be far from the truth.

To my profound relief, the apartment is empty.

Save for one.

"Ken-chan!"

I close the door behind me and offer a smile to the enthusiastic Digimon who scuttles across from my room to lean adoringly against my leg. 

"Hello Wormmon."

"How was school, Ken-chan? You're home early, aren't you?"

"Mmn." I set my keys on the counter and bend to pick him up, cradling him in the crook of one arm. His mandibles click and his eyes take on a happier shape, and impulsively I nuzzle my forehead against his smooth skin.

"Did something happen at school?" Wormmon asks quietly.

"Would you like some lunch?" I counter. He looks up at me for a moment, antennae waving in curiosity, and then nods as I knew he would. 

Things are silent as I compile the sandwiches. Wormmon sits on the tabletop (despite his worry that he shouldn't be, we do eat on the table after all, and to which I reply 'You can be wherever you want, and if the table gets dirty then I'll eat off something else.') and watches me quietly, patiently.

He knows me well, well enough that he knows this story will come out when I'm ready for it to. As always, he's right.

Amidst mouthfuls of lettuce, turkey, and bread I ask him if he remembers when I had a brother.

There's a slight pause as my partner tilts his head to the side, letting the question settle. His aquamarine oculars look me over, as though trying to figure out from the one innocent inquiry just what was troubling me.

"I remember," he finally replies, squirming slightly. "You were usually upset when you talked about him."

"He was perfect," I say with a shrug, as though it were the explanation for everything. "He was Mr. Wonderful. He had the spotlight, the attention of everyone, and it made me feel ignored."

"Never by me," Wormmon reminds me gently. I smile for him and reach over, resting a hand upon his head, my thumb massaging in little circles. He leans into it with half-lidded eyes, and from deep within a rumbling sort of purr emits. 

"I know, my friend."

"You never talked about him after you went away, though," he notes through the purrs. "You were very different when you came back, after all, but I found it odd that you never once mentioned him." He turns his gaze up to me, and for a moment I am encompassed in his sympathy. "I wish I could have been there for you when he died."

For a moment that feels like an eon I struggle to keep my emotions reigned in. This isn't the topic at hand, after all, though I understand he'll bring this up again later, until I'm ready to let him help me through this old wound, just like the others. 

So I murmur thank you, and get to the meat of it.

"Osamu is trying to tell me something."

Wormmon looks genuinely confused, nudging the remaining quarter of his sandwich away, which more than anything tells me how concerned he is. A Digimon turning away uneaten food might be listed among the warning signs of the Second Coming.

"Ken-chan, I thought humans didn't come back like us Digimon did."

"They don't," I sigh, resting my head in my hands. "Therein lies the problem. Either I'm being haunted by my brother, or I'm going completely insane."

"You're not going insane," the confident alto returns, from closer than he was situated before. I raise my head to see he has scuttled ever nearer, to place himself directly in my line of sight, blocking all else. "I would know if you were, Ken-chan, and I know you're not."

"So then my elder brother is sending me nightmares and daydreams?"

He clicks his mandibles together and nods to himself, and I forget that I hadn't yet told him just what my dreams had been about, yet. Well, now he knows.

"Maybe," Wormmon admits. "How do you know it's your brother? Maybe it's something else."

"No." It would have been a nice thought, but the sighting at the school cemented it in my beliefs. "No, I'd know his figure anywhere. There's no possible way I could mistake that blue, spiky hair, the way he kept it messily jutting out in all directions… the way light used to gleam off the shape of his glasses, or his proud posture in the doorway, straight and rigid and unyielding… Osamu was never the type to…"

I trail off, suddenly, because Wormmon is looking very odd.

In fact, he's shivering.

"What?" I ask with a blink. "What's wrong?"

"K-ken-chan…" he stutters softly, eyes going wider and filled with a fear I'd hoped never to see in him again. "Who you just described… to me, sounds more like…"

In my left ear, there is a sibilant giggling.

Jolting upright, straight off of my chair into a wary standing position, I skew my gaze around the room, violet eyes narrowing in hostile terror. This is getting absolutely ridiculous, a genius like me jumping at shadows and tilting at windmills, but I'm too tired and stressed out and freaked out to sit and think it over reasonably.

It's a tiny comfort that my Wormmon is here with me, though I'm not sure whether I ought to be protecting him or vice versa. Neither of us are exactly professionals in dealing with ghosts.

"Why are you looking around like that?" 

I pause, and look at the table. Wormmon is exactly as he was, tense and spooked, eyes locked on me and shimmering.

"Why...? You didn't hear it?"

He shakes his head, and the eyes get impossibly wider.

"I _heard_ you describe the person you kept seeing, Ken-chan. I _does_ sound like the pictures of him I see, with the hair and the glasses and all, but I was just telling you that… to me it sounded more like…" 

I'm not sure if he stops on his own, or if I simply can't hear him anymore, because the room has faded to black.

__

It was dark, dark all over, and cool. His own footsteps echoed back to him, as though the open street were the halls of his once mighty towers, of the erections which held such pride and now weighed down on his soul.

It was dark, and within it there was a figure. He tries to run to him, to take him by the shoulders and beg him to just end this and tell him what it is **he** wants him to know, but he can't seem to move fast enough, or at all. He's not really sure. He opens his mouth to yell, and no sound comes out at all. The figure steps forward. Eerie blue lighting flickers off the rim of his angular glasses, dances at the edges of his spiked hair…

"You haven't figured it out **yet**?"

And suddenly he wanted to run away, to stumble backward, to throw his hands in front of himself, a futile gesture of warding… whatever message this harbinger bore, he wanted none of it.

"You don't have a choice, my Ken-chan…"

"KEN-CHAN!"

Dim streetlight flares into the ceiling of my kitchen, so fast and disjointed that my mind simply can't comprehend. Somehow I ended up on my floor, which would account for the splitting pain in my head. Groggily I latch my fingers onto the edge of the table, pulling myself to my feet before poor Wormmon has a coronary. He's already squirming and fretting to bring down the house. It was his yell I heard last, echoing that of…

…of who?

I hate this.

"I'm okay," I rasp, mainly to myself, partially to the open air. Wormmon nudges at my hand worriedly, and I scoop him into my arms, lurching into my room, where it's cool and dark. I just need to lie down for a moment, until it all stops pounding, and I'll be fine.

"What happened?" Wormmon whispers. "You looked so white and then you just fell."

"Low blood sugar," my instant excuse generator supplies.

"You just ate," he counters, eyes reprimanding me for even trying.

"Just give me a minute," I plead. "I'll talk when it all stops spinning, I promise…"

__

You're just as weak as ever…

"Oh, _god_." I plant my face into the pillow, cupping the feathery confines around the sides of my face as though it could hold the pounding expanse of my brain inside safely. Visions and voices, wouldn't it go figure that after all I've gone through, I'm going insane?

Wormmon said I wasn't. I can trust him, beyond anything else. I can trust him. 

But why won't this all just STOP? Stupid haunting, stupid giggling, stupid dark street, stupid dead brother, stupid Ken…

"Just go away," I whisper brokenly into the pillow, lips pressing against the fabric. "Just go away… just go away…"

Somehow… it does.

Just like that. The headache, the despair, the terror. Gone.

Except a small, tiny beeping.

Wormmon nudges the object toward me, antennae wavering in concern, and to my surprise, I've got mail.

From Daisuke.

_"Hey, you! We're having an impromptu get-together in the digital world! Thought you'd like to come?_

~ Dai"

Daisuke. I should be near him. I feel almost normal when I'm near him.

Daisuke can help me.

"Are we going?" my Digimon asks plaintively. 

I nod, silently gazing at my black D3.

So much in my life was dark… 

"I'll be happy to see Chibimon," Wormmon says gently, nudging at my knee. "And you'll be happier, too. Daisuke makes you happy."

"Aa," I reply, quietly.

His simple series of beeps, and my world is in blessed, soft stillness.

And I know for certain that he will be the only thing to help me through this.

"Digiport… open."

****************************

This.. chapter.. took.. forever… I've been bouncing between this story and When To Bicker, which people seem desperate for more of, and despite my efforts I'm simply not making enough headway on. Hopefully Chapter 3 will come in less time than this one took, but I offer no promises in summer.

I love feedback. This is a subtle hint.

Adult Detective Ken: * Wanders by the 'Muse Wanted' sign, pausing to blink at it in surprise… Jekka jumps down on him with a butterfly net *

MINE! ALL MINE!

ADKen: O.o What th-… HEY! I've got CASES to solve!!

Nooo, you've got fanfics to help write. YOU'RE my new muse!!

ADKen: But… but…

You get to read all the kensuke.

ADKen: ……. m fine.

Neheheh, thought so.


	4. Push the Envelope

Schism ~ an adventure in shounen ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Fanfic Writer's Everlasting Tale of Woe – I don't own these people, but I take the liberty of making them jump through hoops at my leisure. 

Author's Ramble – I wasn't happy with the first draft of this, and finally realized which section was bugging me. Kaiser's section, at the end of this chapter, has been redone completely. I feel better now. I turn my efforts, now, to my Japanese final and also to "When to Bicker". I have guilt about that one. Major guilt. 

* * *

Chapter 3 – Drawn outside the lines of reason

__

* * *

Once, I was a power hungry, crazed, fanatical despot who believed he was living in a game world.

Then I got better.

I have decided that, one day if I should happen to be able to put this behind me and swallow the guilt, I might write a novel, and that would be an excellent tag line.

Amazing, the inane things one thinks of while travelling between worlds.

It is only for a second, the merest of moments, a rush of color and euphoria, the sensation of falling. I can feel Wormmon travelling with me, through the impromptu portal opened in my computer by the power of my digivice, the sensation of _here-to-there_ during which my brain selects thoughts at random, dips into them like a bee collecting nutrients. 

And we have arrived.

"Ken! Oiii, Ken! Over here!"

The enthusiastic welcome I recognize as Miyako, waving erratically from the edge of a lush forest. Her lavender hair becomes briefly ensnared in her glasses, and all effort is rerouted to wrestling it out of her face. By the time I walk over (Wormmon giggling in my grasp) she's straightened herself out.

"A bit windy today," I note congenially.

She grins widely, with a slight blush, and spins on the ball of a foot to skip toward the picnic. Following, my eyes drift from the bounce of her long hair to the highly amused gaze of my digimon.

"What?" I whisper.

"Miyako-chan is a nice girl, isn't she?" he notes.

"Mmn," I agree wordlessly, because it's true.

She's a very nice girl. But she isn't my Daisuke.

Within moments we reach the site, lovely and shaded, a thick plaid blanket laid over lush green grass. The Digidestined and their destined digimon assort themselves around plates of food, chatting and laughing. Takeru is tossing popcorn into the air, laughing as Patamon tries to nab it from his perch atop the boy's head. Hikari is watching and giggling behind a gloved hand, the other resting on Tailmon's head gently. Iori solemnly hands Armadillomon a _toro_ roll, all formality lost as the digimon wolfs it down whole and belches. Hawkmon, of course, admonishes him, and then all six look up and smile as Miyako introduces my presence with flourish.

"Lookie lookie! Ken and Wormmon came!"

They're happy to see me.

Before a swell of emotion can embarrass me, that train of thought is hijacked by Daisuke leaping out of a tree into my path, already speaking a mile a minute about how he was waiting and wasn't sure if I was coming or not. Behind him, Veemon bounces off of the same low bough, giggling and hopping in his partner's footsteps.

"Wormmon! Ken! You're here, you're here!" he chirps, nearly colliding into Daisuke's legs as they both skid to a halt in front of me.

"Hai, hai," I agree, stooping to set Wormmon on the grass. He and Veemon greet each other and head for the blanket, the blue vaccine-type describing to my virus-type all of the delectable vittles awaiting him.

"How was school?" Daisuke asks softly, mahogany gaze searching over my visage. I build up a rather pitifully reassuring smile for him, a slight shrug of my thin shoulders, and start toward the blanket gathering. I would prefer to speak of this later, at a time when it wouldn't taint the sheer wonder of a moment in the sun with friends.

Bless him, he understands.

Nearly half an hour passes before we, all of us, glance at each other with guilty little grins and admit to ourselves that we've eaten too much. Plates are wiped and tucked away, to be brought back to our world later. Digidestined sprawl across the blanket in various states of comfort, taking in the warmth, the breeze, and the comfort of our closeness.

To think that once, I believed this a waste of time, of effort. I believed in its worthlessness, its weakness. As a genius, I was quite the fool.

Here and now, with Wormmon curled at my side, Daisuke bare inches away, Veemon softly snoring, Hikari and Takeru giggling together and Miyako humming contentedly, Iori's stoic silent composure… Here and now, I could exist forever.

Never regretting.

And, perhaps because I feel I don't deserve such a nirvana, I force myself to sit up, shaking the curtain of hair from my vision, seeking to shatter the still of the moment before I slip into dangerous complacency. I haven't atoned for my transgressions, yet. I can't allow myself this peace.

Over the drowsy murmurs of a few conversations, I listen to the sound of my own breathing, seeking a center. 

Hawkmon catches my gaze and winks, as though encouraging me somehow.

This is all very surreal to me.

The Digital World, at times, seems as vibrant and sharp as a painting, technicolor that sears into my eyes and heart and mind, too vivid to possibly be real. It seems infinitely more colorful than the real world, which I think may have been why it appealed to me so much in my younger years. The real world, for me, had gone flat and grey at a young age. 

Of course, that all warped during my … misguided years. Maybe the reason this visual is so poignant to me now is that, having lived behind violet shades for months, my eyes have been trained to appreciate contrast.

Blessedly, before I get into another of my philosophical ruts, Veemon leaps to his feet as though he'd found his patch of the blanket to be ablaze. His huge, shining eyes have a peculiar glint to them as he exchanges a long look with Wormmon.

Daisuke makes a curious half-asleep noise at all the commotion so close to his yet. I very nearly melt at his disgruntled, barely aware expression.

Dignity is saved by the bellow.

"Daaaaisuke, come look, come look! Ken, you too!" Veemon commands, hopping in place excitedly. Wormmon uncurls himself, stretches his little legs, and gazes at me happily. I smile back, as though we share a secret that in reality, these people have helped us remember.

"Look at what," Dai is muttering into his hands, one mahogany eye peeking at his partner in faux annoyance. "I'm sleepin', here."

"No you're not," Veemon states bluntly, poking at the wild crop of hair. "You just talked, so you're awake. So get up and come see!"

"What is it we're supposed to be seeing?" I ask softly, getting to my feet. Veemon grins widely at my assent, then takes to jumping up and down on Daisuke's back as a new form of enticement. The destined of Courage and Friendship yowls and gesticulates wildly, legs thrashing through the air as he tries to sit up through the bombardment of bouncing. Finally he manages to jump to his sneakered feet, glaring at Veemon while rubbing his back, a slight red tinge spreading over his nose as he notices everyone giggling at the sight. Devil-may-care grin firmly in place, he raises his fingers in a feeble little 'V', then, wordlessly, ensnares my arm with his and marches us off the way our digimon direct.

As we depart, I can hear Miyako commenting on Daisuke's need for a pose coach, and Hawkmon's defeated sigh.

"So, Ken, how _was_ school today?" Daisuke prompts while we walk. I manage not to flinch, eyes set solely on the path of our digimon.

My immediate instinct is to tell him it was fine, normal, inconsequential, but I can't lie to my Daisuke. Of course, he would bring it up again, and of course he knows I can't slip by this with excuses.

"Difficult" was the reply I finally decided on. He makes a small noise of understanding, and clears his throat slightly. 

"You know, Ken, I was thinking maybe that your sch-.."

"Here it is!" Veemon hoots in delight, as he and Wormmon squeeze through a break in the underbrush. Pushing a low branch out of my way, stepping over a bush, I move forward to see what they were so keen on showing us.

Sunlight immediately floods the senses. Beside me I can hear Dai gasp as his eyes meet the same onslaught, and it's several long moments before I can blink away the spots.

The digimon are grinning at us triumphantly, no doubt pleased by our reaction, and behind him spreads a sunlit body of water, shifting and glittering, gently lapping at the sand. In a word, it's beautiful. In two words, it's achingly so. In twenty-five words, it's like something from a painting, so perfectly set that one must wonder if there was a higher hand in the construction of this vision.

… Mou. Enough of that game.

"This is incredible, guys," Dai congratulates, eyes wide. "I had no idea this was here!"

"I found it exploring, when we all first got here," Veemon admits, scratching at his head with his small draconian fingers. "And Wormmon knew about it, and thought you'd like it, too!"

The little green one meets my gaze and blushes slightly, squirming under my knowing look.

Digital matchmakers. You should have seen them before Dai and I got together, there was simply no stopping them.

"I do like it," Daisuke agrees, stooping to give Veemon a high-five. "Thanks, man! We should have all eaten here!"

"Sand in the food," I point out, stepping to the side to lean against a tree. 

A genius in his own right, yes, but sometimes a little thick about these romantic set-ups. It only encourages the little ones to try harder, but they know I'm patient enough with this. It's a little embarrassing, really. If Osamu were here, he'd be rolling his eyes at Daisuke's naiveté, and quietly urging me to get closer.

… Now why did I think of _that_..?

"We'll be right back," Veemon announces, nudging Wormmon with an elbow. My digimon bobs his head shortly.

"It's just a moment.. wait here, ne Ken-chan?"

"Hai." Clever devils. They wander off into the dune grass, giggling, leaving me with Daisuke in this tiny little Eden.

"I wonder where they're going," muses my boyfriend, stretching out and flopping to a seat in the sand. One hand pats the area next to him invitingly, and I am treated with a waggle of eyebrows and his usual grin. Of course, I immediately sit with him, and his arm snakes around my waist as I rest my head on his shoulder. There's no awkwardness, no inappropriate elbow, no discomfort.

Just the way we're meant to be.

"Surprising to see an ocean so close to a forest," Daisuke notes, his voice soft and lilting so that I can just hear him over the sound of waves.

"There's a higher probability of it being a lake." 

He smirks, shaking his head. "It's the digital world, it can be an ocean if it wants to be. Anything's possible here."

"There's a higher probability that it wants to be a lake, then."

"You're teasing me."

"I'm teaching you," I correct, pointing to the water with a pale, slim finger. "It's freshwater."

"Says who?"

"The species of fish I keep seeing." On cue, a glittering body launches from the water, shimmers, and slices back down inward.

"Ken," he starts, in a slightly annoyed (if amused) tone.

"Mmn?" I prompt, unable to stop a lazy smile, and glance upward from his shoulder.

Peering at me, his face contorts into a few interesting expressions, and then he ducks his head slightly to lay a quick kiss on my cheekbone.

"You still think too much."

"If that's the reward," I answer slowly, "I may never stop."

"I was gonna stick my tongue out but that felt a lot better in the long run," he admits. I chuckle at that, and he grins, rubbing at the back of his head. "Maybe next time I'll do both."

"Any particular order?"

"I wasn't planning on one. Is that a request?" Cherry-hued eyes glint mischievously in the sunlight.

"Tease," I mutter, resting against him a bit more. I can feel him tense up slightly, the muscles in his back bunching and relaxing, the arm around my waist releasing, and a moment later lifting a portion of my hair, fingers sliding through it almost experimentally. My eyes close to half-lid, taking in the simple, pleasurable sensation for minutes.

"Ne... Ken."

"Mmmn...?"

"I worry about you."

"Why's that?" I ask into his shoulder, living in the feel of his fingers. Lift, sliiiiide, pull… 

"You're withdrawing again," he says quietly, if bluntly. "Maybe not from me, but… I think the others are noticing, too. You know I'm always here for you, but you have to have the others, too, you know. It can't be just me."

I take a moment to say farewell to the wonderful hair stroking before sitting up on my own, gazing at him in slight confusion.

"I'm not following."

He stews in frustration for a moment, and tries again. "I'm not really eloquent enough, but look… you hardly ever talk to the other Digidestined. I dunno if you're still … nervous… about what they might think about you, but you know we all accept you, Ken. We all love you."

"I…" 

I know that. I do. But I let the statement trail off, instead, and look away to the water.

Escape is not so easy.

"You…?" Daisuke prompts, apparently unwilling to let it go, this time.

"It's so much easier, with you," I explain. "I know you're sincere. I can… feel that," I say slowly, one hand raising to press against my chest, feeling the heartbeat within. Knowing it matched his own. "But with them, I…"

"You don't think they mean it?" he interrupts incredulously. "You don't think Miyako, with her crest of sincerity, is sincere? Or that Iori doesn't completely mean every single thing he says? You think Hikari or Takeru would lie to you?"

"That's not what I meant," I insist, shaking my head. "I know they mean it, but I feel somehow that there will always be this shadow of doubt lingering, and I can't stand to face that. I… Daisuke, I don't know how else to make up for it all. I don't know what else to do."

It's almost an anger that flashes in his eyes, but I know it isn't. He's frustrated for me, desperate to help me get beyond this. Sometimes I think we're so close to reaching that point, it aches.

"I've talked to them about it, Ken. If there's a doubt you're feeling, than it's your own, because we all feel the same. _You are one of us._ Get it? There's no proving yourself or redeeming yourself, you can be just YOU and that's more than enough. That's all we want!"

I want to believe him. I say as much, and he shakes his head, eyes sparking.

"You _have_ to put the past behind you, Ken. If you keep doing this to yourself… "

"Forgive me if I'm having a little difficulty putting something of that magnitude out of my thoughts," I snap. "I can't help this, you know."

"…I know. I'm sorry. I just… Look, let's change the subject."

"Sure," I murmur, waiting the approximate six or seven seconds for that decision to meet its death.

And sure enough…

"And you shouldn't care about school so much! You're getting all desperate-looking and I know you're trying hard, and that should be enough, damnit! If I came home with your grades, my parents would faint, and then wake up and throw a parade, and then make sure I hadn't been replaced by a cyborg or something!"

"You aren't coming home to _my_ parents," I reply shortly. "Or facing _my_ instructors. Or watching the expressions on _my_ classmates. You don't understand, Daisuke, and I know you try, but you can't. You haven't been there, and you never will be. You don't understand what the pressure is like."

I cut off my tirade, feeling my throat tighten and unwilling to get emotional about it. Not now, not here. My boyfriend remains silent, either too worked up to talk yet, or left without anything to say.

There's a significantly long, pregnant pause, in which I manage to calm my heart and slow my breathing, listening to the steady rhythm of the water and the wind through the trees. The air is fresh, sharp, spiced with the close proximity of Daisuke's cinnamon-musk scent. Things slowly wind back to peaceful, like the perilous re-steadying of disturbed glassware, or the methodical tension release of a slowing centrifuge.

"Are you still having dreams about your brother?"

On the last syllable, there is the oddest sound… something snapping, or a pop of displacement. I sit upright, nearly falling over, and take a moment to realize it's because I'm suddenly alone.

And…

"What…?" Like suddenly switching filters, or turning on a feature in a photoshop program, the color vanishes just as Daisuke did… or maybe as _I vanished_, from where I _was_. Because I know this place.

There is still a sea, but the water rolls black and ominous, lapping onto an ashen shore. A mottled grey sky stretches on into mist, and the echo of the waves echoes off the fog and the cliffs, rebounding into a dull, lifeless roar in my ears, and a surge of wild panic rises up into my throat-...

I'm shaking.

No, that's wrong.

I'm being shaken.

With that realization comes reality, as quick and violent as a punch to the gut. Color resurges, blinding me temporarily, noises rush back, and foremost is Daisuke, hands gripping my shoulders and pushing-pulling me back to myself. I blink rapidly, bewildered, as he stares at me wide-eyed.

"Crap, man, don't do that!"

"What happened?" I ask, looking around slowly, reassuring myself of my location. The sunlight, the lake, the dunegrass, fish… all there. And me, here in the midst of it.

"You spaced out and got all pale and shaky and stuff," Daisuke tells me, worry pulling his features into a small frown. I look down at his arms, connecting the two of us, and his hands grasped firmly onto me. His tanned, callused hands, still latched on even after he stops shaking me. I reach to take hold of them, and surprise myself with their heat.

He, too, inhales in slight shock.

"Ken, you're freezing."

"Sou desu," I murmur through my daze. Logic is arguing with Panic in my mind, asserting that I never left this place, that it was a momentary lapse into a nightmare, while Panic blubbers that it's all happening again, quivering at the mere sight of the Dark Ocean. Dignity steps in between the two, reminds them that Daisuke is staring at me, and everyone silences.

"What happened?" he asks, releasing my shoulders and getting to his feet, offering me a hand up. "Was it because I asked about those nightmares?"

I shake my head, taking his hand and hauling myself to my feet. 

"I don't think so. I just… maybe I'm tired. I remembered something that I didn't want to remember, is all."

He squints at me thoughtfully, and then turns this gaze toward the lake. 

"Oh."

But I don't think he understands, and I don't want to talk about this anymore. I've developed lots of ways of hiding emotions, over the years. I'm adept at letting my hair shadow my eyes, so he doesn't see the weary, half-sick confusion that I detect in the mirror lately. There's no need for him to worry about me. There are more deserving things.

Unfortunately, this method of escape is well-known by Wormmon, who has made a timely return with Veemon. 

"Ken-chan…?" he offers quietly, scuttling towards us, eyes huge and expressive. 

Terrific. I'm worrying two of them.

Scratch _that_, now Veemon's in on the act.

I just can't win.

"I'm fine," I declare, lifting my head, swallowing it all down with an aftertaste of bile. "I haven't been sleeping too well lately."

"That's true," Wormmon sighs with regret. 

"When I can't sleep too well, Daisuke plays with me til I'm all worn out!" Veemon says, rocking back on his heels and tail. "Maybe that'll work with Ken!"

Daisuke blinks, his tanned face turning pink. "W-well, we usually… um… I don't think…"

"And I'm much more energetic than Ken is, right? I bet you'd wear him out in no time!"

By this time, I must be pink as well.

"I think the others are having dessert," a light alto interrupts.

Wormmon. Oh, bless you Wormmon.

"Dessert!" Veemon erupts, starting in the direction of the picnic and glancing over his shoulder at us, eyes wild with anticipation. "Dessert is my favorite meal! We gotta go, come on, come on!"

"D-dessert," Dai repeats, before bursting into nervous laughter. "Yeah, alright! Let's go get some dessert!"

"Cake, cake, wai wai!" Veemon sings, cutting an impromptu jig. Wormmon glances up at me with both bemusement and embarrassment. My dignified little friend. I chuckle and pick him up gently.

"You know you like cake just as much," I whisper, and he giggles into my arm.

"I wonder if they've got chocolate…"

They do.

The other digidestined have already started into the sweets, Miyako having surrounded herself by an éclair temple, and Iori solemnly sucking on some sort of yogurt tube. Takeru, nearby, is laughing himself silly watching Daisuke and Veemon rush headlong into the pile of digimon, as that is, of course, where the food is. Hawkmon is waxing ecstatic over a spongecake, Armadillomon munches happily on a candybar, and Tailmon and Patamon guard their pocky possessively as Veemon makes several grabs for it. 

I set Wormmon down on the blanket as I cut us two slices of the chocolate cake, lay them on paper plates, and attempt to maneuver through the small party with a modicum of grace. There's an invitingly empty spot near Daisuke and Takeru, and I carefully lower myself to a seated position, handing a plate to Wormmon and resting the other on my lap. 

"Daisuke's folks made it," Takeru notes from my left with his trademark sunny grin. "So we don't have to worry about suspicious ingredients."

Referring to the last picnic, in which we all tried a peculiar concoction put together by Hikari's mother, which I rather enjoyed but Daisuke found to be egregious. Surprising, as usually I'm the picky one about foods.

"That's good to know," I reply in good humor, separating a small square of cake with my fork, and lifting it to my mouth. "He complained of bellyache for hours."

Takeru chuckles, shaking his head. 

"He's already mentioned it, before you and Wormmon got here. There was much rejoicing, though Hikari got a bit defensive. She's off washing the plates."

I raise my eyebrows, wondering if she'd headed for the lake, or if there were a nearby stream as well. I rather hoped it to be the latter; I was strangely possessive of the spot that had, for a moment, been our romantic little hideout.

Wormmon looks up with, and despite his efforts he's gotten chocolate on his mandibles. I reach over with a napkin and a small 'tsk', wiping it for him, when Patamon finally swallows his pocky and joins the conversation.

"Actually, Hikari's been back for a while, but she's just standing over there at the treeline."

"Huh?" Takeru blinks, looking up as I do. It's true. She's standing at the treeline, staring at us with her crimson gaze.

Mark that. She's staring at _me_, with the oddest expression on her face.

"I wonder what's up?" Veemon says around a mouthful of fruity candies. Daisuke flops down in front of me, grinning like a loon while tossing several gummy bears from hand to hand.

"She's realized how good looking Ken is," he jokes. "And that it's almost as good as me!"

Takeru and Patamon roll their eyes in remarkable synch, and Dai leans forward to try to coax a gummy into my mouth. I shake my head firmly.

"Those don't go with chocolate."

I wish she'd stop staring at me.

"Chocolate goes with everything!" Veemon argues. 

"Chocolate is best alone," Wormmon sighs blissfully, finishing his cake.

I really, really wish she'd stop.

"No, chocolate is best with _more_ chocolate!" Daisuke announces, depositing the rejecting gummy bear into his mouth instead. I take another two bites of my cake, keeping my eyes on the dark spongy sweet until the sound of footsteps and settling signals that she's actually walked over and rejoined us. Warily, I take one more bite before raising my gaze again.

She's talking with Tailmon, thankfully. There's nothing quite so eerie as being stared at while eating, and I take the chance to finish up the dessert that's gone regrettably tasteless.

Miyako stands with a flourish, tugging Iori to his feet despite the protests of the short boy.

"Deeeeeeee-licious!" she crows. "Let's all clean up so we can do the visit!"

"Visit?" I ask Daisuke, settling Wormmon's plate onto my own and resting the fork thereupon.

"There's a village nearby," he helps, "an' we decided to check in on 'em, maybe play a game of soccer with the little ones."

"Daisuke's like the Chosen Babysitter of the entire Digital World," Armadillamon rasps with a giggle. 

"He does have quite a way with them," Iori follows. "Are you coming, Ken?"

"I… sure," I decide hesitantly. I still feel awkward about going to visit so many digimon. They must regard me with such hatred, but the others would only convince me to go anyhow if I opt out on that excuse.

"You'll do fine," Wormmon murmurs near my leg, in his knowing way. Daisuke glances over, somehow having overheard, and raises an eyebrow toward me. I show him a smile that's most likely at least half true.

Half true isn't all that bad, right?

Apparently my feeble reassuring is as transparent to him as it is to me; as we walk to the village, his hand steals its way to mine, and grips it tightly. The other Digidestined and their partners seem to exchange a glance, and walk a little further up, even little Iori with his short, rushed legs. To my surprise, Wormmon and Veemon share a similar look and also speed up.

"So everyone can see right through me," I whisper to myself with a little sigh.

"Amazing the powers of friendship, ne?" Dai replies with a rather gregarious wink. "They're worried 'bout you."

"I don't see why."

"Cos they see the same things I do, Ken, even though I thought they didn't. I figured that much out at the picnic. They're all worried for you, about how you're handling things, and wondering what they can do to help."

I give dark blue eyes a bit of a roll. "You can tell Hikari that her method of staring is most certainly not 'help'."

"Yeah, that was a little high on the creepy meter," Daisuke mutters, rubbing at the back of his head with his hand, his most frequent nervous gesture. "But, well, Hikari can be a little out there sometimes."

On the heels of his random comment, I'm suddenly just about drowning in the strangest urge to blabber incoherently with the confusion and terror of my life as of late. Of the dreams, which he knows, and the visions, which he doesn't, and the voice, which he most certainly doesn't. But I won't have him worrying over me. 

Like he says, worrying too much will cause wrinkles.

Yet my divided mind fools me again, for even as I've decided that he's better off not knowing, I can hear myself tell him, simply, that I'm afraid.

Wonder of wonders, he nods as though he knew.

"I can tell, you know. Not about the little things, like visiting digimon, though I know that bugs you too. But all of this, right now. Your wonky nightmares and stuff. It's just a .. whatsit.. a transition, Ken. You just sit tight and wait it out, the rest of the world aint as smart as me so it'll take em a little more time to see that you're perfect just who you are."

His shining cherry eyes bore deep into mine, waiting for a reply.

"Wonky?" I repeat with a small smile.

"My vocab is limitless cos I make my own words." A wink, again. "The secret of my charm and success."

"You're impossible," I sigh, shaking my head. "But I do feel better, Daisuke. Thank you."

"I keep telling ya that you gotta put it behind you," he sighs, "but maybe it only seems simple to me cos I'm on the outside and looking in. I don't wanna be, but I am. So I just keep telling you and hope it gets past those math formulas and sinks into your brain. It wasn't you, back then. It was someone else, and you don't have to live with that guilt."

"But I-.."

"But nothing!" he interrupts. "You're _Ken_, and that's all you are, and all you have to be. Got it?"

Ordinarily I would have asked him just who Ken was, because maybe I wasn't all that sure. We no doubt would have argued a bit. He would have shoved his hands into his pockets and pouted (in his defense, a very manly pout) and say that I was too stubborn to listen… which I was. Usually.

But now… it may have been the sunlight, or the sanctuary of the rough, warm hand in my own, but… I was starting to believe him.

A flash of reflected sunlight caught my eye, and I pulled my gaze from the path to investigate. Somehow the direction we were taking had brought us parallel to the lake that had held our attention earlier in the day, and now it again graced my vision, pristine, calm, and crystalline.

"Um. Ken?"

"Yes?"

"You've stopped."

"…Give me a minute, alright?" I ask softly, slipping my hand out from his and walking toward the break in the trees intently. The sudden burst of sunlight is less dazzling, this time, but I'm not here to look at the scenery. I take a deep breath, followed by another, and another, taking in the coolness and releasing a sticky heat. Cleansing. There's something _right_ about this place, more-so than it being a pretty spot for Dai and I, something right for _me_.

Before my actions can register, I realize I have knelt, and have my digivice submerged the cold, clear water.

"A ridiculous and unnecessary symbolic gesture," I murmur to myself, but as I stand I'm smiling, and somehow… a little lighter. The digivice is, of course, still it's inky grey shade. I wasn't expecting anything else. I didn't need anything else.

Daisuke raises his eyebrows as I rejoin him on the path. The others are far ahead now, we'll have to run a bit to catch up.

"What was that about?" he asks as I match my steps with his again, tucking my digivice away and wiping wet hands on my shirt.

"I had to clean up," I answer with a smile, my hand finding his once more as we race after our friends.

* * *

My other self, rushing into the shadow with your redheaded koibito... willingly stepping into the darker portions of the world. If I pinch myself, I may be able to ignore the sugary-perfect symbolism that could represent.

I like things complex, after all.

It's the most rewarding, see, when you're feeling secure and warm, when the tension in your shoulders finally lets, when the burden seems somehow, suddenly, light. The worst for you is the absolute best for me; you pain is like sweet mana. I believe I crave it.

Still, I needn't disguise the fact that I have my own agenda, and that it transcends far, far beyond simple Ken-torture (not that I don't enjoy delving into such sport, along with so many others). It is a matter of time, now, and the time is very short indeed. Patience pays off, doesn't it? I can be as patiently calculating as I need to be. I could have waited years.

Lucky for me, however, this .. opening up of yours, this slow and gradual lessening of you personal shields.. has expedited the process. 

If you were listening to me at all, you would be confused.

Or… perhaps not. I may be underestimating you. You are, of course, some facsimile of me, though I've yet to untangle who is real and who is the illusion. On a more immature scale, which of us was "here" first. I think it may not matter anymore. Watch Darwinism take place at our hands, this survival of the fittest. I know who is most fit to exist.

And Oh! I finally glance around and see what a state my business has fallen to. My structures crushed, my lines cut, my sources tapped. Stamp out the fire the Kaiser had built and save the precious little world you love. Why should it be the way _you_ like it? 

Miss a single spark and the blaze returns, full force. Did you forget that, my mentally inadequate companion? No matter. I shall remind you, soon enough.

Ah. The Gate is open, isn't it? You're returning to that dull world again. The realm of insects and roleplaying. Very well. 

There is an agenda for me there, as well.

And it is significantly more fun.

* * *

Thank god. Thought I'd never fix that up.

(Adult Detective Ken) … It still doesn't answer any questions. If anything, it's worse! 

You're the muse, mister. You don't like it, gimme something better.

(ADK) … I'm new at this. That's the best I can do.

Nyah. Then stop whining.

(ADK) But what the hell is he planning?!

You're the cop, you tell me. 

(ADK) I wish Stingmon were here..

Me too. He could give me tips on how to stop Ken from rambling.

(ADK) I do not!! .. … well.. when I was younger, maybe… 

And always thinking about yourself. So self-absorbed!

(ADK) Geniuses tend to be.

… sou desu ne.


	5. His Long Wings Beating

Schism ~ an adventure in shounen ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Silly Author's Sobstory: These people aren't mine, and I swear they were never in my bed. 

Silly Author's Ramble – As usual, I'm sorry for the wait. I couldn't get near this til I fixed chapter 3 and worked on When to Bicker a little, and even after that I procrastinated til the guilt set in. It think guilt may be my main motivation. I started this chapter with a basic knowledge of where it would head, and then (per usual) the characters ignored me and did whatever they want. No respect, I tell ya…. Daisuke's POV at the beginning... he's fun, but hard somehow. Watch for a switch to Ken near the end -- you'll see it, don't worry. The quote used in this chapter, and in the title, is from Hesiod's Works and Days. I know the omake is stupid. Bear with me.

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Chapter 4 – His Long Wings Beating…

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My rival sits nearby, innocent, silent…

Waiting.

"Homework!" I declare aloud, pointing a finger at the pile sitting quietly on my computer desk. 

Alright, _one_ of the piles. The only one with books in it. I'm not the cleanest kid on the block, but I like my room with a healthy amount of mess attached. Besides, Chibimon likes to nest in the mounds of clothing I leave on the floor.

"Homework?" he asks in a squeaky yawn, one huge eye peering open at my pose.

"Homework!" I agree, pointing with extra vigor. "Your time is up! I, the Great Motomiya, have come for you! You may have … er... thwarted me in times of past... or, the past... as in past years... but! Not THIS year! I will defeat you, homework! I will write the papers, memorize the tables, even build that stupid little birdhouse I'm supposed to build! Homework… prepare to be subjugated!"

I strike a very, very valiant pose (I used to practice this one in front of the bathroom mirror) and wait for the applause from my small blue pal.

"Subjugate?" he asks, pulling himself out of the pile of clothes and waddling closer, blinking curiously. "Whassat mean? An' why are you twitching?"

"It's one of Ken's words," I answer, un-posing and rubbing at the muscle that just cramped up. "It means, like... to make submit, I think."

My digimon friend eyes me strangely, then shakes his head and wanders back over toward the bed.

"I'm not even gonna ask..."

With a sigh I slump back into the old wooden chair (which I don't think is very good for my back... very.. what's it.. ergo.. numerical), propping my feet onto the desk and eyeing the stack of work like a gunslinger, staring down a foe across a dusty stretch of road. It's not that the work was _hard_, it just took up way too much time on nice sunny days. Plus, finals upcoming or not, studying was really, really, really boring.

Ken. I haven't really seen him much since the picnic a few days ago. I wonder if he's at home, staring at a stack of homework right now, thinking … 

Okay, I don't know what he'd be thinking. "Mwah, this is easy for my geniusness!" or maybe not because it's getting harder for him lately, or maybe (maybe!) he's thinking of me like I'm thinking of him?

It makes me happy to think things like that, though I'm kinda always thinking about Ken, on some level. At suppertime I think "I wonder what he's eating" or "Ken would hate this meal.. wait, I hate this too.. anyone sane would hate this meal". Anytime I look at a soccer ball or a book or a computer or a cellphone, or see someone in grey or with sleek, shiny hair. 

I wish we lived closer together, but I guess that's kinda greedy. All we really need to do to be together is jump into the nearest computer.

How many couples can say _that_?

On the other hand, how many couples were once archrivals on a digital field of battle? How many couples have to deal with small companions constantly setting them up? (They think I don't notice, but the joke's on them.. I'm Super Observant Daisuke, I even surprise Ken with my insight sometimes!) 

Erg. There I go again. I've got Ichijouji on the brain.

And it's obvious that I'm not going to get one single character of homework written today. It's a damn shame that there wasn't a class about Ken, cos I wouldn't have to study for it (although I might just anyway). Hell, I could probably teach it.

For instance, when you talk to him? If he ever says "I .. I'm fine," that means he's not, and it's your job to push a bit more. But if he says "I'm fine, Daisuke" with a bit of oomph on "fine" then you're pushing in the wrong direction and you need to change tactics. If he switches "Daisuke" to "Motomiya" then you've made him mad, and you might be in real trouble (it's usually a good point, then, to look to Wormmon for help). On the other hand, if you manage to get him to use "Dai-chan" (ah, that sends flutters right through me) then you're doing perfectly. And when he starts to look down and to the left, like, and ignores that bit of hair that tends to waft into his eyes, then he's thinking and depressed (I've told him he thinks too hard but he doesn't seem to want to stop). 

A lot of this is from trial and error. It's a little hard, poking and prodding around the shell Ken's made, looking for ways in. He's a pretty handy craftsman, I guess, because the walls around him took me nearly forever to get around. Once I did, though… I dunno. It's like the man who takes forever to climb that mountain but finally does one day and finds Nirvana on the other side or something. Sometimes that's what I feel like; the luckiest guy in Odaiba. Or like a guy about to fall down a mountain. I dunno.

"You're not defeating the homework," Chibimon points out so kindly as he bounces up and down on my bed.

"I'm leading it into a false sense of security," I sniff, snatching him out of midbounce and applying a light noogie. He squirms, giggling, craning his neck to look up at me with this kinda absolute adoration that makes every single hardship I've ever gone through worth it.

Yeah, he looks a lot cooler in his other forms, but there's something to said for cuteness.

"I'm hungry, Daisuke," he says suddenly.

"Me too, kinda," I agree, setting him on the bed. "I think Jun's still home, lemme see if she's planning on making supper."

"But I wanted real food."

I hide a snicker. Jun isn't the best of cooks, but between the two of us she's certainly the better. We try to practice on nights like these, when our folks are out on business, but more often than not we only cook up disaster.

"Just hold on a minute, maybe I can convince her to order out."

If there's one constant thing about Jun, it's her love of older boys.

If there's a second constant thing, it's that she's somehow always foiling my plans. Maybe that's the duty of an older sister or something (she takes a weird amount of pride in it) but go figure the one night I go to seek her out for something, she's getting ready to leave. 

"What do you want, shrimp?" she asks, sounding kinda annoyed and eyeing me as she laces up her boots. I myself would rather be seen dead than walking around town in the black and white striped skirt and pea green haltertop she's got on (I also know she would BE dead if SEEN by our parents around town in that) but hey, it's not for the fashion-smart little brothers to question the vision of the older sisters. 

Bomber jackets are the thing, man. And shorts. And goggles. Ken is the only person I've ever seen who's able to make scarves look though, and Takeru is the only person I know who can choose the dumbest hat in the world. Tai told me once that he wore an even worse one, their first venture into the Digital World. I'm betting Takeru just has really bad hair.

Jun is staring at me… did I forget something? Oh! Right.

"I was gonna ask what you wanted to do for supper," I say with a tragic sigh, "but now I see you're leaving for an adventure."

"Whatever. I'm going to a movie with Himiko and Keiko, if anyone asks." She yanks the edge of a stocking up a little more and stands, looking at herself in the mirror. 

"Yeah, all the no other people who're here," I quip, rolling my eyes. "Forget it, I'll just whip together some noodles."

"Try not to poison yourself," she practically sings, adjusting her hair (similar to mine, but what is cool on me is just scary on her). 

"Whatever." 

I leave her to her primping and head back into my room to tell Chibimon the news. I'm not a bad cook, by any means (I'm really practicing on my noodles! I think I may be on to something!) but I … how did Ken put it? I "lack a certain culinary grace". 

He knows how to make "I burn down the kitchen" sound so pretty. 

A ball of blue fluff leaps at me as I open the door my room, and soccer-born instincts (or maybe battle-born.. or maybe big-sister-born) help me snatch him out of the air and hold him at arm's length. He squirms and giggles.

"Daiiiisuke! What'd she say, what are we getting, is it pizza? Pizza?"

"Afraid not, little guy; Jun's splitting. Looks like Daisuke's home cooking for us."

He (my greatest pal, my best friend) manages not to flinch all that much, grinning feebly.

"Well, you're getting better at those," he says slowly. "I'm sure it won't be _too_ bad…"

Grumbling, I toss him back onto the bed, sweeping the room with a gaze, and spotting them on my closet door. 

The items that are perfect for time such as these. 

The items I wear to war.

I snap the goggles in place onto my head. Fists clench.

It begins.

"Kitchen!" I roar, booting the door back open and pointing at the stove in raw, fiery defiance. "I will DEFEAT YOU!"

And end up staring, frozen in pose, at my sister, who is halfway out the door and talking with the slim, slender, graceful, blinking, beautiful, perfect, extremely bewildered looking…

"You have a guest," Jun says with a smirk.

"Hello Daisuke," says Ken.

Thankfully people are so used to my whacky antics, Ken doesn't really ask what I was saying to the kitchen or why. I think he accepts that maybe he'll never understand my weirdness, like I eventually understood that I'd never understand his sadness. 

Tonight, he seems to have fallen slightly back under the shadow. That's what I call it, in my own head, when the past catches up to him and he withdraws, or gets stiff, and silent, and bitter. He lets his bangs shade his eyes and never moves to tuck them, or he sits with his back arched, like he's compressing into a ball.

It's a bit different tonight, from the usual. He isn't arched or slouched, he's stiff and tall, and awkward. He doesn't dip his head down, but rather holds his chin up, the muscles of his face pulled tight. A different sort, yeah, but definitely back under the shadow. 

Luckily for him, he happens to be at my house.

"Daisuke's gonna cook!" Chibimon sings, hopping from foot to foot as he stares up at the both of us from the table. Ken smiles slightly at him, the action not quite reaching his eyes, and he leans his gorgeous navy-clad self against the warm tones of the kitchen wall, arms folding over his chest.

"Perhaps you'd better point me toward the nearest fire extinguisher, before you begin..?" 

"Traitor," I mock-growl as my digimon rolls onto his back, giggling.

"Safety first," Ken murmurs, and I feel more than see his amethyst gaze sweep over the interior of the room.

"Ne, ne!" Chibimon suddenly cries, leaping back to his feet. "Where's Wormmon, Ken? Or Minomon! Did he come?"

My back is to them, and my front to the stove, but all senses are tuned to Ken. The pause goes for a moment longer or so than I expect, before the light, boyish alto answers.

"He stayed at home. He was… embarrassed."

Odd.

"About what?" my digipal asks for me.

A longer pause. The hand that was adding noodles to the water has stopped completely, and after staring at it for a minute or two I remember, oh hey! That's _my_ hand! And it should be cooking!

"Because I came here to … be with Daisuke."

I may be the only person on Earth who would hear that sentence the way it's meant to be heard. See, there was just the teeniest emphasize on 'be with'. I teach Ichijouji 101, so I noticed it. It means that he means more than just 'be with'. He means BE WITH.

My innards just turned into jelly.

"Alone? Why alone? What are you gonna do alone? Aren't things fun with more people? Daisuke, aren't they?" Chibimon asks, highpitched voice coming in a fast stream.

Ken hardly ever initiates our little bouts, let alone when he's depressed. To think that we're so close, that he came here, to me… 

_Maybe for comfort? Or looking for something… for me? What I can give him? _

And what is that?

"Daisuke, aren't they?" A bright, confused, dear chirp.

"…Daisuke?" 

A low, honey-slow echo.

_And what is that?_

I set the chopsticks down on the countertop, spinning on a heel and planting my hands on my hips with authority.

The reply I mean to say never makes it out of my mouth. I make the mistake of glancing from Chibimon's bright, questioning eyes, to Ken's.

And they're practically smoldering into me.

He …

wants me?

"I…"

_I'm drowning in a sea of smoky purple black_.

"I should be wearing an apron!" I yelp, darting past both of them and into my room, closing the door behind me sharply. Hand still on the knob, clutching, I lean against the door and breathe, hard.

Because Ken wants me, finally, and it's all finally right.

But something is also terribly wrong.

It isn't that I can't explain it… I think maybe I could, if the words existed. For all I know, they do, but I just don't know them. Ken might, but I'm not about to ask him for the words to explain what's wrong with him.

There is something, though. I can feel it, when I'm trying not to. Like it's at the corner of my eyes and if I look head-on it runs away to hide. And whatever it is… 

The door at my back gets a soft knock from the other side.

"Daisuke?"

"… Just a second, Ken. I need to find my apron."

I _need_ to get my heart out of my throat and back where it belongs.

"Daisuke… may I come in?"

His voice, soft and hesitant, full of hope and worry and… well, it's full of Ken. I realize I'm overreacting or something, I must be. Or else I'm just suddenly scared, like he's coming on too strong. That's stupid, though, and I know I'm not the smartest guy but I'm not stupid. Maybe it's the shift of rolls; Ken suddenly wants romance and I'm the one shying away. 

Well, to hell with shy. I stop leaning on the door and open it, and there's my Ken, standing with his head slightly askew, indigo hair drifting in front of eyes that can't quite be amethyst and not quite obsidian. Automatically I reach out to brush it behind his ear for him; he never does it on his own when he's depressed.

Quick as a bird, he has my hand in his own, raising it to his mouth. Shivers zip up and down my spine as incisors brush against the pad of my thumb.

"Ken…" I start huskily, gaze darting to the kitchen behind him. "We really… the noodles.."

"Let them burn," is the low reply.

"But Chibimon…"  
"He figured out what I meant by 'be with'," the prodigy I love says with a smirk. "He's in the living room, with the television on quite loud."

Blush runs over my face, like a trail of fire. Like flames on a bomberjacket.

"O-oh… Well…"

He's closed the door behind him.

My room is suddenly small and cramped, and someone seems to have stolen all the air. I'd find whoever took the air and get it back, only I'm too busy forgetting how to think, because Ken is now drawing the shades to my one window and flicking off the lamp, fingers travelling with a quick efficiency. Slices of silver, bars of streetlight through the blinds, slide over his otherwise grey form as we both move – me, backward, and he advancing.

Everything turns grey in the dark, did you ever notice? Grey like his school uniform, that he hates. He says it makes him feel that the whole campus is colorless or drained, sucked dry of life. Like he should escape from it. Like he…

How the hell am I thinking about stuff like that when the most gorgeous boy alive is in my bedroom, with eyes like _that_? Staring, peeling away layers, calculating eyes, nearly all iris despite the lack of light, dark purple like inkblots.

Eyes that tug at some part of my memory, but I trip on the edge of the bed and sprawl, graceless, before it can connect right. And – and oh my god – and, he's just bending over me, with his hands on either side, and his hair hanging down, the light tips brushing my face, which must look so stupid right now, because I'm just staring, staring at his eyes and down a little to his lips, which are parting and zooming in and before I know what's going on he's –

Kissed.

Me.

Of course I know this is just weird of me. Ken and I have kissed dozens (and dozens!) of times, and it always makes my breath catch and my heart stop, but there's something this time that has me in this weird deer-in-headlight state. It feels like… like… 

Okay. Emotion roll-call. First in line, obvious lust. Explained for by boyfriend who's on top of me. Next up is fear. Could be nerves or shyness, but that doesn't seem quite right. After fear there's … guilt? Like I've betrayed something?

"Wait, Ken," I choke, shaking my head so fast the goggles must vibrate. "Give me a second."

A glint in his eyes sparks the room, and he raises his head slightly, watching me from the lower corners and over his nose.

"You have exactly one second," he purrs.

We both pause.

And he grins, teeth white and perfect and feral.

"One."

Panic surges up through my throat like an ocean, and before I know it I'm moving my arms to ward him off, one palm connecting solidly to his chest, the _thud_ loud against our breathing and the rustle of my sheets. He grabs the hand and holds it there, to his thin sweater, and his eyes bore into mine.

Through the fabric I feel his bodyheat, his inhaling, his slow, lazy heartbeat. How can he be so calm? I'm shaking like a leaf, here, pulse a mile a minute and mind racing right along with…

Wait.

Suddenly I think I know what it might be like to be a genius. Several different things I'd noticed right from the start of the evening shift into place, snap together, and abruptly it's so clear. The posturing, the phrasing, the eyes, the fact that he's got me lying on my bed and yet it feels like I'm cheating on him… and Wormmon's absence.

Next trip to the Digiworld, I might as well go looking for the Digimentals of Instinct and Idiocy, for knowing from the start and ignoring the facts anyway.

"Is something the matter, Daisuke?" he asks with Ken's voice, the grip on my hand absolute.

Something must have shown in my expression (stupid, stupid open-faced Daisuke!) because the smirk that'd been flashing onto his face for split seconds suddenly gets free reign. I swallow, and shiver.

"Our hearts," I finally tell him, remembering Courage. "They're out of synch."

He shifts slightly, setting more of his weight onto the bed, and me, and my wrist creaks slightly in his grip. And he hisses.

"Do tell."

I'm angry. Furious. Wailing, inside, and screaming for someone to tell me what's gone wrong, but it's just us two, so for the most part I'm angry.

"You're not Ken," I tell him.

An old, snide humor slides over his features. I remember that sneer.

"Do tell," he says again, and shifts again.

_Remember Courage._

"Get the hell off me," I growl, letting my eyes narrow. He throws his head back and laughs, a sharp bark that manages to piss me off even more. He thinks I'm not a threat to him? 

He thinks I haven't learned anything from my Ken? I'm so furious I can taste it, hot and coppery, and some corner of my brain realizes I've bit my tongue or something, but that hardly matters at the moment. The rest of my brain is pulling together some sort of plan, which ends up being 'use your other hand and punch him'. Which I do.

He pulls to the side, swift as a snake, my fist only grazing the side of his cheek, but I get the instant I need to bunch my knees up between us and thrust him away, making him stumble across the floor, but before I can sit up I remember he's still got hold of my hand, and he's yanking me along with him.

Remember how I could teach Ichijouji 101? Now we get to the part where Ken happens to be a freakin' GOD at Judo, which is evident in the way that my own room blurs around me as I'm tugged this way and that, and slammed onto the floor, and suddenly pinned by his much lighter form.

"Damn it! Get the hell OFF me!" Flailing, straining, thrashing around, only to have him laugh at me, leaning in close, noses brushing, his breath in my mouth.

"This is very much a Hesiodic moment," he tells me, which for all I know is French or something, but I'm busy noticing that his hair got all mussed up in the tussle and it's sticking this way and that.

And now I know. I knew it wasn't Ken. Now I know who.

He continues, sing-song like, as through I wasn't swearing and shifting beneath him.

"'No sense in your crying'," he murmurs, "'You're in the grip of real strength now… And you'll go where I take you, songbird or not. I'll make a meal of you if I want, or maybe… I'll let you go.'" Grinning madly, he tilts an arm just _so_ and pain shoots up my whole shoulder, and I'm wishing I took a martial art along with soccer or that his head was a soccer ball.

"Tsk," he sighs. "Do you know the end of that passage, Daisuke?"

If I open my mouth I'll groan, or my shoulder will fall off, so I grit my teeth and glare with all my might. In a perfect world, laser beams would shoot out my eyes, but this is the real world, ne?

"I suppose you wouldn't. Hmph. It goes like this: 'Only a fool struggles against his superiors. He not only gets beat, but humiliated as well.'"

Figures. Egomaniac.

"Did we learn anything from that little adventure in quotation, my Daisuke?"

"I'm not _your_ Daisuke," I spit, "and you can take your stupid quotation and go screw yourself."

He snorts, moves again, and I swear to god my shoulder's about to dislocate, but I'm more worried about the gleam in his eyes.

"'Screwing me', as your elegant terminology puts it, is exactly why _you_ are here."

_Okay, forget Remember Courage, let's go with BLIND PANIC!!_

Enter the miracle.

Or my crazy good luck. With the sort of sudden strength you get with blind panic, I somehow squirm right out of his grasp, and even he looks surprised at that. Well, I'm not giving him another chance at this. 

I guess there IS something to be said for home turf. Peeking out from under my bed is the old baseball bat I got as a child, back from when Dad used to try to spend time with me. Ignoring the pain, I snatch the handle and whip it at his legs as fast as I can handle.

_CRACK!_

The sound he makes reminds me of when our neighbor's dog went bonkers. He clutches at the shin I just whacked, and I launch myself at him, tackling his midsection and we both smash into the wall.

There's a stillness, plaster dust falling around us, as we just stare, glare, and hate at each other. I'm dimly aware that our position has me straddling him, and that his tongue darts out to wet his lips, and that the dust in his hair makes him look old.

"Do you prefer it on top?" he asks quietly, a corner of his mouth twitching into a grin. "Worthy adversary?"

I shove him, as much as I can, and his back thuds against the wall but he's still staring and grinning.

"How dare you," I snarl, fists clenching. "How dare you show up again, here. How _dare_ you think you could fool me, pretending to be _him_, you… … you…!"  
"Say it aloud," he offers, head tilting. "Make it real."

"Where's Ken?" I ask instead.

"You're sitting on him," he replies with a laugh, all amused and delighted like. I shove him again, this time rewarded with the sound of his breath slightly knocked out.

"I want _him_." I swallow down the urge to punch him right on that mocking grin. "I want _him_, and not..."

_And not..._

"Say it and make it real!" he demands, like thunder in my ears, so I squeeze my eyes shut and the fists get tighter, I think I've lost feeling in my fingers, and louder than his voice is the blood in my ears, and why am I always doing what he tells me to, not when he's Ken but when he's…

"Kaiser," I tell him, to feel him relax and feel myself nearly break apart with the awful truth I've faced. "Digimon Kaiser."

"And here I thought you'd forgotten," he sighs, shaking his head. "I was almost disappointed."

"Wherever the hell you came from, you can just go right back, alright? No one wants you here. Put Ken back and go the hell away."

_Or I swear to GOD I'll_

"That's Friendship talking," he surmises. "And anyway, don't you know that this is your doing to begin with?"

Blink.

"What's THAT supposed to mean?!"

"Did I use too large a word?" 

"HOW is it my doing?!" I raise a fist and stare him down. Taichi calls this the Motomiya Death Glare. It has failed to impress any teachers. It also fails now, but damned if it doesn't make me feel better.

"If I tell you everything," Kaiser says, "then you'll never learn."

If he's even telling the truth, then, if _I_ brought him here _I_ can damn well send him back.

Er. Somehow.

"Is that an idea I see lighting those delicious cherry oculars," he asks lazily, "or are you realizing what amazing things we can do from this position?"

"Why don't you just shut up?" I snap, and for good measure I give him another harsh shove, even though they aren't really doing anything.

We both wince at the sharp, painful noise his head makes as it cracks into the wall. I think he wasn't expecting that one. I must be right, because he looks awfully confused, his eyes swirling like fog before clearing into the cobalt-shaded amethyst I should have been looking for all night.

And he says, "Daisuke?"

And I say, "Ken?"

So now MY head hurts.

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We can't really talk to each other, after that. Daisuke insists on inspecting my head, constantly murmuring his apologies, when all the while I feel that I ought to be the one begging forgiveness.

I have no idea for what. 

I have no idea how I got here. Or why he's skittish around me, glancing from the corner of his eye when he thinks I won't notice. Or where Wormmon is. Or the pain in the shin, and my head, and the disarray of our clothes, and the burning pan of what used to be noodles.

Per usual, I turn to escapism. I don't wonder. I don't question. I hide my eyes from the monsters, thinking they'll vanish if unseen. 

Even the smallest of children know better.

But it is a method I cannot leave behind… even knowing the monster it created the first time. I use it still.

We found Chibimon in the laundry closet, stuck under a load of blankets, dazed, panting, and saying he "just felt a quick shove". Daisuke hugs him tightly, and says nothing. I say nothing.

He picks up his D3 and walks into the other room. He'll be just a minute, he says, he wants the others to come over. We need to have a meeting, he says, and he won't tell me why but I won't ask, therefor it's of no real consequence. 

I won't say it aloud, for that would make it real.

Instead I slip my own D3 out from my pocket, finger sliding over the smooth, black surface, and step gingerly through the mess of Daisuke's room. An apparent warzone. 

And, as usual, I escape.

"Digiport open."

The Digital World holds little beauty for me today; perhaps it is still there, resplendent, shining, green and promising, but I have no eyes for it. Confused, bewildered, miserable… frightened.

I wish Wormmon were here. I consider making the quick trip back to my apartment, relish in the notion of scooping him into my arms and warming myself. I'm so cold.

I don't know where I was. I don't know how long I was there, but I remember the picnic, and then it's … murky. Indescript. Dark, and cramped, and drowsy. Can a place be drowsy? Was it even a place?

It was… like being tossed aside, unwanted, left in a damp hole at the edge of the world while the rest of life turned and walked away.

It was all of that and yet not. Once I think I was back on that foggy street, the one I dream about incessantly, with my brother and his message that maybe I'll never receive. Once I was in the desert, where I once built a base and created the second monster of my life. For a moment maybe I was in Daisuke's room. 

Or maybe it was, all of it, in my head.

Walking aimlessly, I come to a rock wall standing without sense in the middle of the field. No more unnatural than a telephone booth, or a bus, is it? Back to it, I slide to a seat.

I wonder why I seek solitude in times of turmoil.

As though I crave it.

If it weren't for Wormmon…

"If it weren't for Wormmon," I whisper, "I'd think I had been destined to be alone…"

"But you aren't alone."

My own voice answers me, and I snap my head up to look so fast I knock my still-sore cranium into the very wall that's supporting me. Terrific. Why bother saving braincells now, anyway?

Because if I'm seeing this, I have to be crazy…

"You've never been alone," the Kaiser says, as he strides forward, his boots crushing the plants before him, his glasses glinting, his back to the sun, and the twin elliptical stretches of cape stretching out behind him, breeze caught in the thick fabric.

"'His long wings beating'," I murmur, hugging my knees to my chest like a child. He stands over me, tall and looming, shadow stretched over me. 

"'Thus spoke the hawklord'," he agrees, lips curling into a grin.

I don't think I can simply turn away from this one.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--End chp 4

Adult Detective Ken: …. .

What? What's your problem?

ADK: Why'd you DO THAT?!

*shrug* Cos that's what was supposed to come next.

ADK: But.. but..

Stingmon: Ken!! Don't worry!

ADK: Wh-.. Stingmon?! Where have you been?!

He's been helping me read other fanfics. I gave him free stuff. *nod, nod*

ADK: ….. Stingmon?

Stingmon: I couldn't help it. The fics were good.

ADK: What free stuff?

Stingmon: …… So what did I miss?

Ken's upset because his younger self is an escapist schitzophrenic.

ADK: I WAS NO-.. …. What free stuff?

Stingmon: Read and review!


	6. The Snake Behind Me Hisses

Schism – A quaint adventure in Shounen Ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Crazed Author's Disclaimer – I own no characters, human or digimon, that you find here. I don't own this chair. I think once I owned a stuffed dog. His name was Juno and he loved me. 

Crazed Author's Rant – Um, here's the next one. This was supposed to start with a Ken-flashback, but it's been moved to a later chapter as a dream sequence. Now it starts with the short spice of Kaiser, and then to Daisuke's POV, which means grammar and vocab take a dive. Surprisingly, it ends in Ken, who I was NOT expecting to speak up in this chapter. I guess he just has to have a say in everything… Sorry for the wait, but the peeps who read my other fic have an even longer one ^.^;;. Thanks for the support, all 8 of you.. Thanks for peeking in, let's get started. One last note: Sometimes Daisuke will think of the older kids with 'san', sometimes not. Don't let it bug you too much, he's not very consistent sometimes.

__

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Chapter 5 – What My Damage Could Have Been

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

He knows that I hate him.

I can tell by the furtive, wary glances he casts my way every so often, or the slowing of his pace, sometimes lingering in one spot on the shifting desert sands as though considering his options. That never lasts very long, as his options are few in number and most consist of wandering in the wasteland. I have taken his precious digivice, after all. Intriguingly, the ebony mechanism no longer fits in my hand as it once did. Perhaps it has adjusted itself to Ken, though were that the case I would surmise a return to its natural hue… instead, it is as shadowy and void as it has been the moment it was submerged in that ocean of roiling ills. Once we two arrive at the pitiful remains of what was my glorious base, I'll give it a bit of looking in to.

Ken seems to be waiting for me to do something other than walk… no doubt terrorize him or enslave everything within a three mile radius. All of the bad blood existing between us beside, his edginess is most likely due to the self-assured smirk I've worn since finding him. He believes me to be exulting in some secret plan, or laughing at an inner joke. 

Which _is_ exactly so. 

He cannot possibly comprehend the gravity of what I've done: the thought and effort, the so many details that went into this grand scheme, though to him I imagine it must be confusing. He is walking with the Kaiser _he_ once was, and both of us flesh. Yet were we not of two existances, this whole time? He is Ken, and of us two he is the child, sensitive and driven by emotion, unable to cope with the harshness of reality. It is right that he be bewildered and dazed. I will lead him through the desert, and being the lamb he is he will blandly follow. Perhaps in a bit I will stroke at his cheek, confuse him with pretty words, and whisper reassurances. If not that, something spicier – I haven't yet decided, and really, some things are better decided with a slice of spontaneity. Is this narcissism or masochism? I will simply refer to it as victory.

I believe he is now thinking of the other Chosen Children, wishing a speedy rescue or perhaps mentally begging their assistance as though I _was _terrorizing him. 

I suppose I am, simply by existing. 

It is that absurd failure to accept outcomes that makes him Ken, the weaker of us two. I do, of course, hate him, just as he must hate me. 

His hatred is inconsequential.

I am the Kaiser borne anew, and the games are just beginning.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I can't tell what upsets me more; what just happened in my bedroom with Ken, that Ken just up and vanished, poof!, into the very air of my house (or I should say poof!, into my computer, cos I know that's where he went), or that it took me fifteen whole minutes to realized that the poof!ing had happened. Fifteen. That's fifteen sets of the ONE minute it _should_ have taken. Five sets of three minutes… hell, three sets of five! Two sets of.. … Okay, forget this.

The point is, what the hell kind of a loving, hunky, caring boyfriend am I if I don't realize that my traumatized and troubled love-of-my-life (not very _long_ life but you gotta admit highly experienced) has just jumped through my computer. I shoulda been watching him or hugging him or gee, I dunno, asking him why he was just someone else. Not that Ken would know for sure but maybe he would know, but I doubt it cos he looked just as surprised and confused as I bet I did. Maybe that's because I hit his head against the wall too hard. But it did the trick, right? It made Kai-… it made that _other _one leave and Ken come back. So head wounds = good!

Ken leaving = bad. Especially if he's in _that _kind of state. Maybe only me and Wormmon know how bad he can get when guilt creeps up his back, and he's gotta be guilting right now. I could see it start to shade in at the edges of his eyes, right before I left the room to call the others to come over right the hell away. 

And it's only because they actually listened and came over right the hell away that I'm not in the Digital World this instant tearing the place apart looking for him.

Taichi-san and Yamato showed up first, marching right in the house (guess Jun didn't lock it behind her – man, would she be in trouble!) and bodily preventing me from 'digiport open'ing. Even when I explained (er.. yelled.. screamed.. beat them around the head and shoulders…) the situation they just sat me down on a chair (they're HUGE! Stupid highschool kids with their.. um.. tallness) and told me to calm down, the others were on their way, we had to discuss a plan.

I hate plans.

No, scratch that. I love plans when the plan is "Just run in, get it over with, and enjoy life afterward." Isn't that a good plan? I made it myself.

The plans I _hate_ are the ones that take forever to make and always include lots of "Unless THIS happens" or "And as backup we might do THIS" and waiting, I especially hate the waiting. I said as much, but Yamato and Taichi-san just exchanged a look and then Yamato said I was rambling and making no sense. Or, less sense than usual.

I yelled at them because what didn't make sense was _not _going after my Ken, as in MY Ken who needed ME and not a plan, and then Taichi-san threw a cup of water into my face.

So, shivering, soaked, and stuck on a chair with my two huge upperclassmen on either side, I waited for the others to show up so we could talk and make plans. Which brings us to the now, in my bedroom (the baseball bat is still on the floor, and I think there are new cracks on the wall – Ken cracks), surrounded by Chosen Children and assorted Digimon. Chibimon creeps out of the nest of clothes that was on my bed and is swallowed up by a mass of fur and feathers that is Upamon and Poromon. The three of them bounce and chat, and I'm mad at myself again for not even thinking to check on Chibimon while I was not noticing that Ken had left. What the hell had I been doing?

Tailmon is standing against the closet door, paws folded over her chest, tail whipping around the mess of my room. I think the tuft of purple fur at the end of it is actually dusting the corner – sweet. Now I won't have to. She meets my gaze with sharp feline blue, and I can't tell if it's annoyance or pity or something I like even less in there, but then Hikari touches one of her ears and she softens toward me. Takeru seats himself next to them, shifting aside a box of trading cards to settle on the floor, with Patamon perched, as usual, in that stupid, stupid hat. Miyako shoves a pile of books and manga off of my chair and claims it as hers, with Iori kneeling on the floor near the bed. His eyes flicker over the new cracks in the wall – I see them do it – but he doesn't say anything about them. Upamon, Poromon, and Chibimon have now bounced _onto_ the bed, and it's getting really really cramped because Koushiro-san just walked in, too. The whole place reeks of the disaster supper had become, but no one but me's noticed yet. I think. 

"Jyou's at his math camp," he says shortly, setting that crazy laptop down on his lap as he sits on the bed next to me (Taichi-san and Yamato are both at the door now, standing like wild-haired guards). "And Sora emailed me to say she's stuck with her mother at an ikebana seminar. This is everyone."

Except it isn't. We're missing the most important person. No… _people._

"Wormmon," I blurt, sitting up straighter. "We should have Wormmon here. And he should know what's going on with Ken, I bet he could help too, or at least help us _find_ him."

"Oh, sure," Miyako replies, drumming her fingers the knee of her khaki-panted leg. "Let's call up his house and tell his parents we're coming over to get something from Ken's room, but don't look in, cos Ken's not there at the moment, and we can't say why, and pay no attention to the giant worm we're removing from your house please. Yeah, that'll go over well."

"Then we don't tell them," I grumble. "We just go get Wormmon."

Yamato coughed harshly and it sounded a lot like "Breaking and entering".

"The closest thing we have to a ninja is Iori," Takeru says, stretching an arm over his head.

"Absolutely not," the young kendoist says flatly.

"I wasn't saying we were gonna send you."

"It's no anyway."

"Guys, guys, guys," Taichi interrupts. "Wormmon'll have to wait. He'll be fine, he's had to do much harder stuff before, I'm sure."

"Like eating boot 24/7," Tailmon mutters quietly. I throw a glare at her but before I can say anything, it's Hikari who speaks up. 

"We're past that," she says softly. Just that. Tailmon goes silent, and stays that way for a while.

"From what Taichi told me on the phone," Koushiro says awkwardly, "we're here to discuss the fact that, for a moment at least, Ken appeared to be the Digital Kaiser, and made a move on you." He lifts his eyebrows at me skeptically. "And then when you bashed him against a wall he was Ken again, with no apparent recollection of the events in the immediate past." 

I study the pattern of Miyako's shirt, not quite wanting to look at anyone quite yet. That stuff had only happened less than an hour ago. About 28 minutes, actually. Fifteen of which had been wasted by not noticing Ken had left.

"That's what Daisuke told me," Taichi said, and somehow from his voice I knew he was looking at me. "He was a little spastic on the phone, but that much I understood."

"Daisuke?" Koushiro nudged, interposing his short, manicured fingers into my line of sight, and then resting his hand on my shoulder. "Does that sound right?" 

"Of course not," I mutter, and note that Koushiro keeps all of his fingernails at the same length and rounded. He must have just clipped them. "It's what happened, but it sounds anything but _right_."

"That's not what he m-.." Miyako starts, cut off by Yamato's curt "Whatever."

Koushiro's hand against my shirt doesn't look right. The fingers need to be slimmer, longer, paler. Ken's hand against my shirt. Kaiser's hands grabbing the fabric as his sneer looms over my face. Ken blinking in a daze. Ken slipping into the computer while I was in the other room being stupid. Ken wandering around the Digital World as we speak, doing god-knows-what or in trouble or hating himself or…

"Daisuke!" Taichi barks, yanking me out of the nightmare. "I _will_ get more water."

"I think he needs a minute," Iori says quietly. 

Chibimon presses himself against the back of my head, a comforting warmth. I can feel his heartbeat. 

His heartbeat.

I sit up from the slouch I ended up in, brushing Koushiro's hand off and readjusting my goggles.

"We don't need Wormmon," I tell them, cracking my knuckles. "I can find him when we get there. Let's just finish up here so we can get there at all."

I take a mental image of their surprised and, just maybe, admiring faces, at my sudden comeback. I don't have the time now but I'll revel in it later. I mean, I'm not the leader for nothing, right? 

"You're sure?" Patamon squeaks. Takeru's eyes roll up as he tries to look at his partner. I wonder how often that happens and if Takeru gets headaches from it.

"I can find him," I repeat firmly. "And I can tell if it's Ken or not, too. That's how I could tell, his heartbeat was off synch with mine." Well, yes, that and the strange seductiveness. No need to voice that, though.

"That'll help you, but how can _we_ tell?" Iori muses. Upamon bounces away from Chibimon (I guess they decided not to roughhouse while Chibimon was pressed against my head) and lands in the boy's lap.

"Yeah," Upamon agrees. "Only your heart is in synch with his. That doesn't help us."

Iori makes a funny exasperated face and tugs gently on one of his digimon's long, white ears. 

"That's basically what I just said."

"I'm agreeing!"

"Question!" Miyako chirps, hand shooting into the air.

"Er… go ahead, Miyako-chan," Koushiro says with a blink. (From the corner of my eye I can see Hikari and Takeru exchange a glance, and they both mouth 'chan?'_. I_ think it's cute. I think everyone should be in love.)

Miyako sits up and blinks, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

"What the hell smells so bad?"

"Dinner," I reply sourly, just as Chibimon's stomach rumbles like an oncoming earthquake from directly behind me. I'm pretty sure it shakes the whole bed.

"I'll make something," Yamato sighs, stepping out of the room. His footsteps sound toward the kitchen. Taichi smiles after him, folding his arms over his chest and leaning against my doorframe. He looks a lot more relaxed, I guess cos he figures I'm not going anywhere alone now.

"What'd you cook?" Koushiro asks, sniffing at the air and probably analyzing the charcoal-ish scent.

"It was gonna be soba noodles," I mutter. "I got sidetracked."

Tailmon clears her throat imperiously, and her tail has started to flick around like the neighbor's cat's tail does when it decides it doesn't like you. 

"Can we get back to the discussion?" she suggests in her strangely adult voice. "We were contemplating how to tell Ken from Kaiser." She looks straight at Hikari, like the teacher sometimes looks at that Nanasawa girl who sits in the first row when she's the only one who ever knows the answers. I'd probably hate Nanasawa for that if I hadn't fallen in love with a genius. Now I just be happy that _someone_ knows the answers and that means I won't get called on.

Hikari nods once, and pulls the camera she always carries off, sliding her head through the loop and scooting across my messy floor to hand it to Koushiro. He looks at it curiously, then seems to understand as Hikari pulls a cord out from her pocket and hands it to him.

"USB plug. Not a problem," he says, opening the laptop and inserting the cord somewhere along the side, and hooking the camera up. 

"You can develop film?" Poromon squeaks in surprise, flapping his little wings and clicking his beak. Miyako just groans and rests her forehead in her hands.

"I should have guessed," she says, giggling.

"Huh?" That's me saying that. As usual.

"Digital Destined, Digital Monsters, Digital World," Taichi recites, a grin working at the edges of his mouth.

"Digital camera," Hikari finishes for him, and they share a look like that joke had been going on for a long time. Jun and I don't have jokes like that. I wonder if she even has a good sense of humor.

"Which files?" Koushiro asks, typing.

"They should be called 'Soccer' and 'Park'," she answers. I lean back to peer at the screen of the laptop. It's pretty neat, for being so small and thin. I bet in a million years I could convince my parents to get me one.

He doubleclicks a couple of times and two pictures open up in separate windows. I recognize them immediately.

One is Ken, a few months back when Tamachi and Odaiba had the soccer game. It was slightly before I realized Kaiser was Ken and vice-versa. In the picture he was standing up straight, his uniform slightly mussed with grass stains. It must have been mid-game or something. Actually, now that I think that, I can almost place it. We were just starting the second half, and there was The Rocket, standing up rigidly and surveying the field, his eyes darting over the bright green sod like a general at a battlefield. I remember thinking I'd love to be playing for his team, even more than I'd love to _beat_ his team.

The second photo was probably from two weeks ago, because that's the only time I remember when we all met at the park and Ken had worn the green shirt. He doesn't wear that shirt very often. He's holding Wormmon in the picture, and both are smiling at the camera, both looking shy. I _want_ that picture. 

"Are you finished?" Koushiro asks dryly. I realize I'd been hovering over his shoulder, practically, and scoot back to my spot. 

"So what is it?" Takeru asks, puzzled. The laptop gets spun around so that the screen is facing the room.

"Hikari-chan noticed this a few days ago while she was going through her files," Tailmon explains, striding over to the laptop. "Both are of Ken, obviously, but think of them as 'before' and 'after'."

"That's a great close-up," Patamon notes. "We were all the way in the stands, right?"

"I've got great zoom," Hikari giggles.

Tailmon clears her throat, reminding me of my teacher again. Yikes.

"What she noticed is here," a claw tapped gently against the screen, and I leaned forward in a rush to see what she was tapping at, "and here." Tap.

Taichi walked over from his place at the door to look closer, so I guess Hikari never went over this with him. 

"What are we looking for?" he asks.

"Compare for a minute," Tailmon says.

I peer. I stare. I wonder if Hikari has any pictures of Ken and me together. I try to compare. Before and after. Aren't those candies? Now, that's Now and Later. He's playing soccer in one, he's with us in the second. Both are on grass. Um… soccer uniform versus a green shirt. Cold scowl versus shy little smile. He has Wormmon in one but that's no help cos Wormmon's at his home.

"His eyes!" Patamon suddenly squeals.

"Precisely!" Tailmon congratulates, and suddenly everyone in the room is rushing over to the screen to look. Bunches of heads collide. Mine included. Chibimon laughs at me, but only until Yamato's voice floats in from the kitchen.

"Noodles are up."

"In a minute!" no less than five children and three digimon shout back.

"I see it now too!" Miyako says, right in my ear.

"Show me, show me!" Poromon demands, bouncing up and down.

"I don't see it yet, Iori," Upamon whispers loudly.

The boy gets up from his kneel and taps at the screen the way Tailmon did. We all back off to let him explain. He's good at explaining things, see, and it seems to help him stop thinking he's the 'useless young one'. So we all agreed that when Iori starts to explain things we shut up and let him. Which is good cos usually he's right.

"The difference is in the eyes, like Patamon said," Iori says, pointing first at the soccer-Ken's eyes and then happy-Ken. "If you look closely, there's a color difference, and the size seems to be different as well."

"Freaky," Miyako mutters, but she's nodding. 

"I thought it might be a coincidence," Hikari adds, "so I pulled up all the old newspaper articles I could that were about Ken back when he was the Digimon Kaiser. They all look the same; fake smile, tiny irises, and pupils so tiny it looked like there was a spotlight in his face."

"We couldn't say the color change was an indication for sure, because the newspaper photos were in grayscale," Tailmon cuts in. "But you can definitely notice a constant trend in the dilation of his pupils."

"And his eyes don't seem to reflect any light, in the old photo," Taichi says quietly. "They do, now."

"So that's how we'll know," Takeru says cheerfully. "I wonder if Kaiser knew his eyes were funky-looking. Maybe that explains the purple glasses."

"Daisuke," Chibimon whispers, nudging me gently. "I'm really, _really_ hungry."

I am, too. And I'm feeling a whole heap of other things worse than hungry, but at least hungry can be fixed by noodles. Yamato was nice enough to make them and all, so I shove aside the strange jealousy I feel by everyone oogling over my Ken, scoop up my blue partner, and walk into the kitchen. Taichi-san glances up as I go, but I pretty much ignore him.

Yamato-san slides a bowl of noodles (better looking than mine, I think with a sigh) my way without a word, and sets a pair of chopsticks down right after. A smaller bowl goes to Chibimon, who doesn't need utensils cos he pretty much just plants his face into the bowl and eats everything around him. 

I eat in the sullen silence of my disappointment in myself. Why hadn't I noticed the eyes? Why did Hikari see things that I didn't, even though I spend more time with him, I'm the one dating him, I'm the one who's going crazy with the need to find him. 

"It might be better for him to have this time alone, you know," Yamato says suddenly, his low rumble of a voice cutting over the sound of water and dishsoap filling a pan coated in burnt noodle. That's gonna be a real bitch to clean. Mom's gonna have a fit. Jun should have ordered pizza. _I_ should have ordered pizza. And Yamato's still talking even though I didn't even look at him.

"Sometimes after you run into a part of yourself you don't particularly like, you need to go off on your own so that you can figure out what you want to do with it. This time to himself might be the best thing for Ken."

I didn't think so, but I didn't want to argue with him. He was awfully close to the sink and I'd had enough water thrown in my face for the day. 

There was one good point to the whole day, though, and it's keeping me from gnawing my own arm off in worry.

Nobody, not _one_ of the digidestined, had said anything even vaguely like an "I knew it". They were as surprised as me, as surprised as Ken. No one had scoffed and nodded, they all just showed up right away (well, except for Sora and Jyou who couldn't, and Mimi who's still in America, so obviously not her, but everyone who could at least) and set to figuring out the problem. They all came to _help_ us. To help me, to help Ken.

I can't wait to tell him.

We just have to find him, first.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I don't know why it takes so long to regain my full capacities again. It seems like I've been wandering with senses wrapped in gauze, only vaguely seeing the world through a thick gray film. 

Dimly I knew exactly who it was I was walking with, but it wasn't until now that I think the implications actually struck me.

We walk through the echoing corridors of what was once my base in the Digital World. I suppose now it would be more fitting to call it his. He takes confident, assured steps. He knows the way better than I do, despite the fact that I once wore that outfit, I once ruled these halls, and I once built this roving fortress.

I guess I can only be thankful that, even though a Kaiser has come again, this time the atrocity is not I.

And yet it is.

I admit I haven't figured it out yet. 

We emerge from the walkway into hollowed-out chamber that was the video room. Most of the screens are black, shattered, or missing completely; some of the damage is recent. I wish it had been _all_ been eradicated: another oversight I'll be sighing over for a time. 

"You seem to be alert, finally," my own voice notes, perhaps a bit more nasal, a bit more bitter. That was the voice for the dictator.

"Why have you brought me here?" I ask softly, and he turns.

Up until now I had been presented only with view of his back, and a brief moment when the sun was too bright behind him to truly see. Now we stand, face to face, he and I. It's a bit of a shocking Geminid moment. He wears the blue and purple and black with the casual ease of one well accustomed to its snug enclosure – the hair is in perfect spiked disarray. His glasses reflect the nominal light, but I'd prefer to not see his eyes. I don't want to see.

"Not 'why are you here?' but 'why have you brought me?'" He sighed theatrically, crossing his arms. "Ichijouji, I'm crushed."

I would be lying if I said I had absolutely no warning of this – I should have realized by the dreams, by the tone of the voice I briefly heard that time in the kitchen. Wormmon probably saw it, but I never listen to him as much as I should. Another thing to apologize for a lifetime for.

"Where is Wormmon?"

Kaiser snorts in derision, turning away from me dismissively yet answering all the same.

"The insect remains at your residence, no doubt sniveling with his worry and love and other forms of emotional putrescence." His fingers tap rapid staccato over a keyboard covered with thick dust. "I had left him behind when I left for Motomiya's house, knowing he would undoubtedly notice things were amiss before your beloved 'Dai-kun' did."

If I weren't so angry I would blush.

"Why did you do that to Daisuke?"

The typing pauses and he glances over his shoulder with a strange sort of smile I can't quite place. "Do you have idea how close we were to victory?" he whispers. 

For one split moment I can almost see myself in him.

It terrifies me.

"Yes," I admit. "But Chimaeramon was an irreparable error. The moment the idea was conceived, the figure of the Digital Kaiser was doomed."

"Doomed," he repeats with a short laugh. "Your idea of doom is less permanent than the norm, isn't it? I'm right here, after all."

"So it was for revenge," I deduct, watching him carefully. "A way to punish Daisuke for the fact that we failed, back then."

"Perhaps," Kaiser says playfully. "There is a definite possibility that that may have been my motivation."

"And if it wasn't? What was, then?"

"You don't remember me very well if you expect I'll give you straight answers," he chuckles. "No matter. I remember well enough for the both of us, even to compensate for your damaged cognizance."

Damaged?

"What do you mean?" I ask slowly, frowning.

"I also never repeat myself," Kaiser says curtly, hitting a few switches. Several of the monitors suddenly leap into static life, white noise and snow the only thing received. The erratic, jumping lightsource throws ghosts of shadows all over the chamber. The slight strobe effect also makes the scene seem in slight slow motion. Kaiser didn't deign to notice; he simply murmured something about satellite positioning and began typing again.

Obviously _that_ topic was closed for the moment. I picked another from the plethora of things nagging at my mind.

"Why did you send me those dreams?"

He stops for a full two seconds. The sudden lack of typing is like the ominous silence of a building thunderstorm: thick and oppressive. Only two seconds, but it's enough to remind me exactly who I'm contending with.

The Digital Kaiser is not a person to be taken lightly or trifled with. Of anyone alive, I ought to have known that.

"That's for me to know," he answers, and the clack-clack of his keystrokes resumes. I can read him well enough to understand what just happened – he didn't know what I was talking about. He didn't send me any dreams at all. And I also understand that to mention it again would produce repercussions I most definitely did not want. 

"Ichijouji." 

He pulls my attention to the moniters, which have ceased their static dance and now center on one lone spot in the Digital World, a lush glen with a solitary television stranded in the middle. It was an entrance point we used often, and now as we watched, Chosen Children began appearing in bursts of rainbow light and shifting data.

"They come," Kaiser says quietly.

I chance a few steps closer to better see which of the Digidestined have come through; the actual number of them surprises me. Even the older children, some of them, are present. Daisuke must have raised an unholy ruckus. He's quite good at that.

I'm close to him now, beside him as we stand before the looming, dilapidated wall of screens. I don't dare speak, knowing what speed that arm would snap out with. I, instead, watch the play of light over his glasses, wondering silently what this would all lead to. 

And as an unreadable smile slides over his face, I contemplate what it will take this time to dismantle the monster.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Omakase Flavor – Grape!

Welcome to the after the chapter chaos; today, my muse and I will be discussing how world leaders often fail to take responsibility for the decisions they make concerning poverty. Also at the panel is Stingmon.

Stingmon: ::raises a hand:: Question!!

ADKen: ::trying in vain to fit in the grammar-school sized desks:: I remember these as being larger….

Yes Sting-kun?

Stingmon: ^^;; Why do some of your chapters seem to have two different titles?

ADKen: Because she has no idea what she's doing at any given time and just _makes_ them up.

Hmph! I'll have you knoooow I plan that stuff out. It's true! This chapter, for instance, while you're selecting it on FF.Net's page seems to be called "The Snake Behind Me Hisses", but as you can see above, when you get IN the file it's called "What My Damage Could Have Been." It is actually all one line, a lyric to be precise, that I loved but felt was too long, and each half sounded good on their own. This happened once before with "Push the Envelope/Drawn Outside the Lines of Reason", although that line was originally "Drawn Outside the Lines of Reason/Push the Envelope/Watch it Bend." But "Watch it Bend" on it's own is kind of… meh. So instead I flipped the first two lines and scrapped the third. Each of these examples is an excerpt from Tool songs, which is also where the title "Schism" attacked me. See, it all works out in the end.

Stingmon: Aaah, I see! Are we going to rescue Ken-chan now?

ADKen: ::blushing:: I'm a bit old for 'chan'…

You're never too old for 'chan', Ken cutie.

ADKen: ::sinks into his trenchcoat..::

Stingmon: He's still shy.

ADKen: ::mutter…..::


	7. Stick My Hand Into the Shadow

Schism – A quaint adventure in Shounen Ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Crazed Author's Disclaimer – If I owned fictional characters I'd make them eat potatoes until they burst.  There would also be Showtune Sundays and Meatloaf Mondays.  Let's all rejoice that I don't own any fictional characters.  

Crazed Author's Rant –   Um.  Ohisashiburi… It's been a while.  No excuses from me, just apologies.  I hope the story is still any good, I had to re-read it myself a couple of times to get the feel for it again... if this chapter seems awkward, it's because I'm trying to fit into my old skin.  Countless nods toward New Obsessions and Vainglorious for providing the motivation to blow the dust from my keyboard.

_…………………………………………………………………………………………………_

Chapter 6 – To Pull the Pieces From the Sand 

_…………………………………………………………………………………………………_

            Amusingly, Ken can't seem to decide what to watch.  Though he can't seem to help watching the progress of the Digidestined, he would prefer to keep his eyes on me; that much is easily apparent by the way in which my every slight motion brings his attention careening back.  It's becoming a habit of mine to make little noises in the back of my throat; slight displeased sounds that he's well familiar with, I should think, and watch him tense up as though waiting for a hand to fall.  Most amusing is that fact that one of these times that hand _will_ fall; he just won't see it coming.  That wouldn't be any fun at all.

            After pointing out his ragtag group of "rescuers" on the few monitors that still worked, I let him stand and deliberate for a time while I returned to the dilapidated control panel, typing short commands and prompts toward several systems to see what still worked, and what was lost.  The overall conclusion: things are worse than I would have liked, but not beyond repair.  I built this empire up from nothing, after all.  Building one up from the remains of the previous should hardly be considered an effort.  That would imply that the work were some sort of "chore".  Ludicrous.  

            I enjoy every second of it.

            Take, for instance, the Ken issue.  Although one would have to acknowledge that the recent events revolving around him and Daisuke Motomiya are most assuredly not the central part of my machinations, this does not mean I should not expend a certain amount of concentration and effort thereupon… nor does it suggest that time spent working on that angle is not time well-spent.  Rather the opposite; it is, bluntly, delicious.  The way Ken spirals confusedly, wrenching between guilt and fear and anger, how delightfully lost he looks when he meets my eyes, is equally as engaging as watching Motomiya come to his realizations.  Seeing the veritable lightbulb above his head flicker into regrettably dim illumination was sheer poetry: the way his eyes widen as his pupils shrink, and how his hands spasm into tight little fists… poetry, plain and simple.  Better than the simple, black-and-white workings of say, a physics problem, or the delicate inner intricacies of one of my dark spirals.  The sort of verses these two are capable of goes far beyond the respectable structure of mathematics.  Consider for a moment the quickening of Daisuke's breath as you loom over him, knowing the power of your own tongue over your own lips.  Consider the possibilities of a body that you also own, and of eyes like colorful bruises, glassy with pain or pleasure.

            Poetry to rival the finest of haiku, which are only words, only ink on paper.  The artisan world may keep its lyrics, its imagery of melting snow and the gentle trails of a falling autumn leaf. 

            Aa… while I've been thinking to myself, Ken has returned his gaze to the monitors.  I suppose he must be quite anxious to meet up with those other children.  Just one last thing to recover, however…

            "What are you looking for?" he asks quietly, and I feel the feather weight of his gaze as I kick aside some fallen pieces of ceiling, the fine powdery dust rising and settling again around my boots.

            "My whip," I reply shortly, and from the corner of my eye he jerks in slight surprise.  Is he startled that I would bother to answer him?  Perhaps he should be; I so rarely give straight answers.

            "It's at the bottom of my closet," Ken says after a short while, and his voice is tight.  

            "Wanted a souvenir, did you?" I chuckle, nudging at another piece of debris with a foot.  "Does our Dai-chan know about this bit of memorabilia?"

            "_Our_?"

            I'll allow this much to Ken: he's gained a bit more of my attention.  He didn't just echo, he actually _hissed_ that word… forced it out of his mouth like an angry cat.  Like _I_ would.  

            How intriguing.

            "Our," I confirm, one eye still on him as I continue to prod through the fallen pieces of my fortress.  "Yours, and mine as well.  I believe you do know the definition of 'our', intellectually inferior though you may be…"

            "He's not _yours_," Ken snaps angrily.  "And don't you dare ever … ever _touch_ him like that again, do you understand?!" 

            I can't help it.  I snicker.  In fact, I encourage it, and soon the mocking laughter is rebounding off the cold metal walls, surrounding us like an audience, a hateful chorus.  It spooks him… or perhaps he's just realized whom exactly it is he's mouthing off to.  Ken was never one to stomp over thin ice, but we seem to have found a very touchy nerve.

            "I do believe I'll touch him however I want to, Ken."  I keep my voice to a reasonable, light tone.  I think I'm close to it now, though it's really a shame so much of the ceiling has collapsed.  I may have to consider putting some supports in here before working on any other systems.  "You may find that he might prefer the sorts of... sensations... I can give him, over your sad, clumsy little advances."

            His mouth opens, and snaps shut, and opens again.  It seems he doesn't dare use any of the retorts that are coming to his mind.  Pity.  He'd almost developed a spine, and they're all so much more fun to break when they've got actual fire.  That's why I enjoy the time I spend with Motomiya so much.  The boy _is_ fire.  

            Ah.  Here it is…

            "Daisuke is not 'yours'," Ken finally says, but it's under his breath, and I would describe the tone as sullen.  "And why are you still looking?  I told you, your whip is at the bottom of my closet."

            "He is as much mine as he is yours," I murmur as I bend to push away the fragmented remains of what appears to have once been part of the temperature control.  "That much is only obvious.  It hardly matters in the long run, I suppose, as I own you both…" And my fingers close over the handle, so that when I straighten back out, the length of the whip is pulled from amidst the rubble, slow and methodic.  I run it through my hands, gloved fingers sliding over the texture as I let the satisfied smile spread.

            This really is much better.

            Ken looks so surprised, I nearly laugh in his face.  Instead, I start systematically coiling the leather.  His hands twitch slightly, though I don't think he himself notices.

            "…_how_?"

            His voice is so small.  I step over the assorted broken things, crossing the distance between us.  His eyes seem large in his pale visage… it's all I can do to keep myself from putting my hands to his face and teaching him how life really is cruel.  

            That's not on the schedule for today, however.  I tease him with the whip, brushing it against his cheek, and grin when he jerks his head away.

            "Because, my regrettably lesser half, you're still too hung up on what's 'possible' to ever get anything accomplished.  We spend half of our existence in a world made of zeroes and ones and you're too busy concentrating on what you think you know to be '_truth_'."  I step away from him slightly, looking at the flickering screens that are providing most of the illumination in the room.  The group of children is still doggedly approaching, and I suppose we ought to go out and meet them, soon.  It's only proper.

            He follows my gaze for a moment, but doesn't seem to be ready to give up his line of thought.  Ken has this problem with letting go, you see.

            "Even if that's so, how can it be here when I know that it's also stuffed in a box back in the real world?  There are two whips, now?  What else can be duplicated like that?"

            "What else, indeed," I murmur, prodding at him pointedly with the butt of the whip.  "You continue to amaze me with your relentless idiocy.  You should wonder more at how a whip from a digital world, a whip that is nothing but written data, could be brought through the gate to your 'real world'.  You ask all of the wrong questions, Ichijouji, and meanwhile the answers are laughing in your face."

            A somewhat doubting, if not outright haughty, gaze meets mine.  This child continues to both amuse and irritate me.  You'd think, after all this time, he would have learned who his betters were, yet he continues to dredge up these incessant displays of sporadic backbone.  It may be appropriate.  I am a part of him, after all, though he denies it.  If he were brighter perhaps he could add the factors together, and see what's going on and why.

            But we've gone over this many times.  He is not the genius of us.

            "Come, Ken," I order suddenly, shortly, turning on a heel and brushing past him.  "Your friends are waiting."

            "Wait."

            A few more strides, and I stop in my tracks, head slowly turning to the side, not quite looking at him over my shoulder.  

            "Wait?"  I echo.  

            He's silent.  I turn slightly, gazing at him in half-feigned interest.  He looks surprised, or sorry for having said it, and a shiver runs through him… but his hands clench into fists, and steel enters those silken eyes.

            Hmn.

            "What are you planning to do?" Ken asks… no, demands.  I raise my eyebrows slightly, and smile.

            "They've come all this way for you, haven't they?  Don't you _want_ to go meet them?"

            "But it doesn't make sense.  What's your plan?  You can't have taken me all this way just to hand me over to them… what are you going to do?"

            "I have to have a plan?" I ask in amusement.

            "You always do," he replies with a frown.  "You always have.  So, then, what is it?"

            "If you can't see it for yourself," I scoff gently, "then I'm not going to simply hand it to you.  Perhaps the problem is that you can no longer understand the level at which I work."

            An embarrassed flush creeps over his features.  He's thinking of his school… of failures and futilities, and of the way his parents look at him when they think he isn't aware of it.  I see it all in his eyes: the disappointment in the shape of his family's mouths and eyes, and of the whispers of his schoolmates.  He tells himself under his breath that it doesn't matter, because is a better person now.  He whispers to himself countless times, like a ward against the stares and frowns.  It's a shame, really, because he doesn't even believe it himself.

            I have seen and heard this all with him, watching his world from behind his eyes, the veritable information center that he'd believed to be a prison.  I have seen through him, in so many ways.  This doubt of his, this will to please everyone, to live up to everyone's expectations… I know him, you see.  I'm closer to him than he'd like.  I am in his skin.  I know how he works.

            And so he can never win.

            "Come," I say, again resuming along the path that leads us outside.  His friends are, after all, very close now, and I would rather confront them on the sands then have them bungling their way around this place, already in much need of repair.

            I don't need to look back.

            Ken follows.

_…………………………………………………………………………………………………_

                Okay.  I'm going to say something, and it's going to be a shock to some of you because it's very deep and profound and a lot of humanity doesn't expect that sort of thing to be coming from me.  I dunno, maybe some horrible memo was passed around the planet at some point in my youth (or younger youth, which I will call youther), but for some reason all the people around me seem to expect nothing but sports talk and nonsense.  I could make an effort to set the record straight for these people, but I'm a little short on time at the moment as I am on a rescue mission.  This rescue mission is actually what led to what I am now about to tell you.  

            My deep and profound statement is as follows:  I _hate_ the desert.  And honest, I know it sounds silly and stupid and certainly not deep, probably shallow really, but hate is big, you know.  Hate is _huge_.  Hate is like there's no way back, once you slide down the little graph and hit "Hate" you've really gone over the edge and you'll be hating for quite some time, if you ever get to stop hating at all.  I don't think the desert's going to particularly mind if I hate it, which I do.  It's hot, and there's sand in all sorts of places that I won't want to think about, and it's really hard to walk because you put your foot down and, whoop!, _the sand moves_.  So considering the fact that it's really uncomfortable right now, I'd like nothing more than to break into a dead run and arrive wherever the D3 wants to lead me and find Ken and make sure he _is_, in fact, _Ken_, because he wasn't for a while, there, _again_, but see, there's this problem of the desert.  

            Maybe it isn't so much that I hate the desert as the desert hates me.  Why else would it be so stupid and hot and … movey.  I was all fired up to end this thing as soon as we left my house, but somewhere between the Digital Gate and here the "righteous fire" turned into a worried sort of sick feeling.  It must be showing on my face; Yamato and Taichi are walking along on either side of me (Yamato with so much sand blown into his gelled-up-hair that the sheer weight of him could be about to topple him), and they keep tossing glances at each other, and then at me.  Like I don't know they're exchanging looks, or that I don't know what they're thinking.  I _do_ know, and they're thinking that maybe I can't handle this because it's gotten too personal.  But see, that's exactly why I have to.

            Fact is I'm the one who's supposed to be leader here, right?  Aside maybe from Taichi, who's a leader in his own right, but on an outing like this I think I'm the leader.  I'm the one who's tracking Ken (by use of D3, which I guess sure we _all_ have).  To hell with that, I'm the one who's _dating_ Ken.  If by some fluke of fate Yamato went all villainy then there would be an outing and Taichi would be the leader and that'd be that.  But that's not how things are.

            So I'm the leader, but I know I'm not really acting like it.  I'm at point in the group, I'm leading the way, but am I the leader?  The leader's supposed to be all controlled like and calm and collected.  I'm so not ANY of that right now.  I was okay when we left my house, like I said, but there's a lot of walking in the desert and not much to do while you're walking except think.  And the more I think (a dangerous pastime that I try to avoid most of the time) the worse I feel about this.

            I mean, think about it, honestly.  There has to be something seriously messed up going on.  I can't even guess at what started this all this time.  Ken and I have talked, a little, about what brought about the Kaiser in the first place… you know, his brother dying, some big black ocean, though really even Ken himself doesn't seem to be too sure of the specifics.  There's this Ken-Kaiser-Ken routine and maybe history repeats itself.  

            If we find him, and he isn't Ken, I don't know what I'm going to do.

            "Daisuke," Yamato says, suddenly, his low voice sounding almost as down and serious as mine in my own head, so I look at him wondering what sort of things the exchange-of-glances party he's had with Taichi have led him to decide.

            And he smiles.

            "It'll be okay," he tells me, with the sort of authority that makes it sound like it's really his decision on whether things are okay or not, and then looks back ahead of him.  Taichi smiles slightly, at the corner of his mouth.  I look at the both of them, and then I look over my shoulder at the rest of the group, who I'd almost forgotten was there.  

            Some leader, incidentally, forgetting about the very people he's leading.

            Directly behind me is Veemon, looking serious (it's out of place on his usually cheerful self), but when I look at him he throws me a small encouraging little smile, making him look almost the way he should.  Trailing behind him is the next cluster, Miyako and Iori (who's having an even harder time walking through the sand than the rest of us, what with his short little legs, but he's not complaining or saying a word…), with Armadimon scuttling along and Hawkmon gliding behind Miyako's head.  Koushiro stayed behind, but I'm sure he's bent over his laptop somewhere and probably more aware of what's going on than we are.

            Behind and slightly to the right of them, Hikari and Takeru have taken residence at the back of the group, and they're talking about something I can't hear.  Patamon is on Takeru's head (perhaps to hide his ugly hat from the world's eyes) and Tailmon is at Hikari's side, though slightly ahead of her.  When I look at her she's already staring at me, so I whip my head back around to the front and make a show of studying the digivice.

            The indication of Ken has moved slightly since I last looked, and luckily for us it's coming in our direction.  I bet he's using his to track us like we're tracking him, so we can meet in the middle.  Actually, now that I really look at it, he's pretty damned close.  I think I may be about to swallow my own tongue.

            My world has stillness.

            Sometimes while I'm playing soccer there's this moment I get.  Maybe it's at the end of a game or right at the first whistle or during a really crucial kick, but sometimes when I play it happens, where all the other things around me, the audience, the teams, the field, whatever's on my mind, it just shuts up and takes a back seat for a minute, and there's me, and there's a ball.  That's it.  Everything else goes all freeze-frame, just me kicking a ball in a moment of complete stillness.  Those are my game-winning kicks, usually.  It's like all my focus pulls in and zeroes in on the ball and then it's all going to be okay.  When I focus, and it's rare I know, but when I focus, nothing can stop me.

            I feel like that now.  Like the desert doesn't matter, like I'm surrounded by friends, and while I know they're there and I can feel them, I'm not seeing them at the moment.  Not even Veemon, walking so close behind me he keeps stepping on my heels, he's not really in my focus at the moment.

            It's me, walking toward someone, and it's that someone walking toward me.  My heartbeat's gone unnaturally loud in my ears, and it carries a faint echo behind it, the hint of another heart in perfect time.  I clench my fists and grin.

            Time for the game winning kick, right?

            Over one more sand hill, or dune I guess they're called, and it's starting to look familiar.  This is because all deserts look the same, and every inch of every desert looks like the rest of it.  But actually, it looks familiar because in the background there's the broken remains of the Kaiser's fortress.  Last time we were here, Kimeramon was rampaging, Wormmon was deleted, and Ken threw a screaming fit and tore all his Kaiser clothes off.

            Woo, memories…

            There's a gust of wind that stirs up too much sand, so I stop, flinching back and trying to cover my eyes with my arm.  There's a few other grunts and unhappy noises behind me, cos no one likes sand, but I'm not paying much attention to all that at the moment.  We're too close to each other to dare think of something else until the actual moment happens and this is all resolved.  Focus can't go until you've done what you've focused for, or you'll lose.

            The wind dies, and the sand starts to settles, and when I pull my arm away from my eyes, there's a silhouette of someone standing about twenty feet ahead of us.

            First whistle, Daisuke.

                        _Let it be Ken, let it be Ken.._

Game start.

                        _let it be Ken, let it be Ken, let it be_

            "Motomiya," Kaiser purrs.  "And all of his friends.  How nice."

            _Fuck._

Behind and around me, I can hear the rest of the Destined gasp in recognition.  I don't gasp but only because it's less a shock to me.  I already knew he was back, considering he was straddling me earlier this afternoon.  I said his name, even, and he grinned sharp teeth because it was true.  He's in the outfit he used to wear, now, the one that turned to nothing but little pixel bits after the Kimeramon fiasco.  Maybe there was a closet full of spares… and freaking crap, he's even got his _whip_.  

            "This… probably isn't a good sign," Yamato murmurs under his breath.  Taichi snorts in some sort of reply, I guess.  Miyako and the others step closer, so that it's one close-knit group facing Kaiser.  Just how it used to be.

            "Ken…?" Hikari asks softly, while Tailmon steps ahead of her partner slightly and folds her paws over her chest pointedly.  Patamon has left Takeru's head in favor of hovering above it slightly, and Takeru has his hat in his hand.  Maybe that big gust knocked it off or something.  He looks grim, like maybe he was expecting this and didn't want to say anything.  Iori has a similar expression, next to Miyako who's got both hands over her mouth and huge, shocked eyes.  Hawkmon lands next to Armadimon, who's _yawning_.  Closest to me is Veemon, who places one small paw against my leg, as though the little guy could steady me somehow.

            Well, it works.

            I swallow down whatever the million emotions that were in the way were, and straighten my back and shoulders.  There's got to be hope (I'm not talking about Takeru), anyway.  I still feel a heartbeat in time with mine.  Ken's still here, Kaiser or not.  The focus hasn't totally left me.  I can still do this.

            "I don't know what's going on," I say to his mocking little smirk.  "But we're going to fix it, Ken."

            He tilts his head, smirk growing by every word, and shakes his head slightly in feigned disappointment.

            "Still haven't gotten my name right, Motomiya.  If it's Ken you want to talk to, you're addressing the wrong one of us."

            "What the hell does that m-"

            And Kaiser shifts to the side, revealing what he'd been previously blocking from view with his caped and spikey-haired self.

            My Ken meets my eyes with a mournful, guilty purple gaze, and Kaiser bursts out into laughter, probably at our expressions.  I can only look between the two, dumbfounded.

I officially have no clue what the hell is going on.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

            I had expected that Kaiser would gloat for the entire walk from dilapidated bastion to the small group of gathered children.  It would have been in his character to use the time to perhaps tell me what he surmised their faces would look like, or the words Daisuke would use and the ways he might react.  Kaiser seems to have a fascination for Daisuke in particular… I can only assume it's because of our relationship.

            Which 'our' and which 'relationship', I can no longer distinguish.  

            We traveled without speaking, my past and myself, side-by-side at the beginning.  His stride is longer than mine, somehow.  It doesn't take long for him to get slightly ahead of me, and then wholly in the lead.  He walks with authority as we walk in silence.  I think he must be thinking.

            Rather, I know he's planning.

            Vague outlines of figures and people begin to be visible through the sand-thick wind, closer than I'd realized.  I wonder vaguely just what Daisuke had to do in order to convince the older children to come, not from any disbelief in my comrades but just from knowing that, factually, most from that particular generation of Digidestined would be less inclined to rescue me as they would to punch me in the gut.

            A sudden violent wind causes the sand in the air to thicken, so that for a few moments it's just Kaiser and I standing amidst walls of light yellow-gray.  He turns slightly, eyes catching mine through the violet lenses of his glasses.  His expression never changes, nor is there the slightest gesture… just one significant glare.

            We do this his way, he's telling me, and there is no argument permissible.  

            I ignore the unease that this communication is simply passed between the two of us effortlessly.  Very little should have the power to surprise or unnerve me anymore, considering the sort of day I've had.  I nod slightly, and he situates himself in front of me as the wind momentarily calms and the sand settles into its new formations.

            This is the closest we've been since I came here, Kaiser and I.  The edges of his cape are ghosting along my legs as the wind alternates between teasing and buffeting.  The dark riot of his hair wavers just slightly, held in place somehow whereas my own hair can't decide which way it wants to fly.  His smell is oil and rust and animal musk.  He gives off heat, just a trace amount but noticeable.  

He truly is alive here.  He has been made real.

What that makes _me_, I have yet to dare guess.  

People are talking, children's voices, strained and questioning, and Kaiser replies in his unconcerned and confident manner.  I can feel the rumble of his vocal cords and wonder if anyone ever noticed how different our voices really are… or is that just me, never hearing myself the way I really sound?

"If its Ken you want to talk to, you're addressing the wrong one of us," Kaiser says to the group with a sneer, and he abruptly takes a sweeping step to the left, opening my view to the world again.

The sense of _Daisuke_ hits me like a warm wind.  It's the equivalent sensation to stepping out from under a cement threshold, out from some cool and ancient crypt that's begun to seep into your lungs and bones with its own sort of comfort, back into natural noontime sunlight.  I hadn't felt him at all a moment ago, and now he fills my being as I meet his eyes.  The cherry chocolate depths are simmering with concern, and now they widen to implausible specs in his confusion.

Kaiser is laughing.  The sound startles me out of the state I'd fallen into, wherein all that existed was Daisuke.  It's not a _bad_ state to be in, but perhaps now is not the time or place.  I can see the other Digidestined gathered around Daisuke, lending their support or at the very least alternatingly staring from Kaiser to me and back around again.  I'm sure they were lending their support just a moment ago.  The digimon are here as well, excluding Ishida's and Yagami's who wouldn't have been in the real world to begin with, though they may well be on their way here.

            No one seems to know what to say.  Kaiser just continues laughing, holding his sides and nearly bent over, shaking as though the mirth would tear him apart.  I suppose he hasn't had a good laugh in quite some time, being reduced to nothing but giggles in the back of my thoughts until just recently.

            Ishida… no, I've been trying to use their first names, now… Daisuke insists we're friends, after all, so… _Yamato_ tears his gaze from Kaiser and stares at me, clearing his throat rather brusquely.

            "Are you alright, Ken?" 

            What a stupid question.  

            But I lie and nod, and at least the moment has passed.  Some of the tension passes away; the children seem to be able to breath again.  

            Taichi glances toward Daisuke, but he hasn't remembered how to talk quite yet and so the leader of the preceding generation takes the initiative in his stead.  It's interesting how you can observe how the whole group dynamic works when you're standing slightly apart from it.  I feel as though I am an impartial observer, and not truly in the middle of this all.  

            "I don't really know what's going on here," Taichi declares (and Kaiser snorts in utmost amusement, finally shaking off his laughter), "but to begin with, we're taking Ken back."

            "Why, Yagami," Kaiser replies, standing to his full height (it's not much, granted, we aren't the tallest of adolescent boys) and flexing his fingers with a slight creak of fabric, "you sound as though Ken was one of you to begin with."

            "He is," Iori says flatly, his eyes dark and serious, watching us all measuringly from beneath the bangs of his bowl cut.  "Don't bother trying to convince us otherwise."

            "We've been through your sick mental games before," Miyako adds, frowning.  "We don't wanna hear it anymore and we're not gonna listen anyway, so save your breath."

            Miyako I of course expect to defend my name until the world ends.  Iori, however, will always vaguely surprise me when he speaks in my favor.  Perhaps I do him an injustice in this.

            "If this is how you treat me," Kaiser sighs, "I don't understand how any of you can be all that nice to Ken.  You'd think there were some sort of difference… though perhaps there is, now."  A slight tilt to his head and glint at the lens-edges of his glasses, a slight prickle to the back of my spine tells me that he's looking at me closely from the side.  Kaiser always looks at things in terms of how they work, how he can use them, or how he can dissect them.  It's no wonder that to be subject of his studious stare is disconcerting.  

            I try to ignore it anyway, and note that the digimon are all glaring at Kaiser as though they'd like to trample him into the dunes.  I remember that glare, and as I recall it never particularly bothered me.  

            Him.

            Whatever.

            "There's a huge difference between you and Ken," Takeru says, pulling his hat back over his head.  "We don't expect you to understand."  

            "Why don't we ask Motomiya," Kaiser suggests with a sly grin, gesturing invitingly as Daisuke seems to startle out of a daze.  "He knows us both the best, after all."

            Daisuke glances between the two of us, apparently still trying to make it add up in his head, and cautiously asks, "Ask Motomiya what?"

            "Whether or not there's really so much of a difference between Ken and I," Kaiser replies simply.  "You'd be the best equipped to answer, Dai-chan, having been so … _intimate… _with the both of us."

            "That's 'cos you're a sick bastard who li-"

            "All of that aside," Taichi interrupts, "we _are_ here for a reason." 

            "Of course," Kaiser nods, "to welcome me back and congratulate me on my long-awaited return.  You have all done so spectacularly and I thank you for coming out this far.  However, I will be requiring Ken's services for a while longer, so you'll be returning without him."

            "Forget it," Yamato cuts in.  "We're not leaving without Ken."

            It probably should be bothering me that I'm being discussed in the third person while I'm standing right here, but it really isn't.  It's helping me to remove myself from the situation, and we must all remember that escapism is my favorite trap to fall into.  It's the only one that works, even if only providing a temporary relief.  As I'm trying to pretend that none of this is happening, however, Daisuke meets my gaze and gestures me over discreetly.

            As though Kaiser would let _that_ happen.  I shake my head slightly as it wouldn't do any good.  He's probably watching the exchange anyway, and if he's said that he isn't through with me yet, then he really isn't, and that being so he isn't about to let me just stroll away.

            The other Chosen Children may not quite understand this.  It's better for them, though, because that means he hasn't _looked_ at them, not that they've been aware of.  You have to understand the way he works once you lock eyes with him, I don't understand how anyone couldn't.  Meet that flat, lightless glare once and you'll grasp that he will have things his way or he will simply crush you.

            Daisuke, of course, has been _looked_ at in such a manner, but he's too optimistic to face the sort of weight that it comes with.  Daisuke believes in options.  That's probably why our relationship works at all.

            "We're going to have to settle this here, aren't we?" Takeru asks.  "It's the only outcome if you won't let us take Ken and we won't leave without him."

            They'd fight for me?

            "I prefer to look at it in terms of 'I won't let you take Ken and you're all too imbecilic to realize there's nothing you can do about it'," Kaiser says with a shrug.  "Furthermore, I'm interested into why no one has asked Ken himself what's going to happen, here.  Equal-opportunity heroes such as yourselves ought to keep these things in mind."

            "Ken's coming with us," Daisuke insists.  Fierce nods of agreement all around the group, with digimon at the ready and hands hovering over digivices.  They really would fight for me.

            The problem to that is, I believe they would lose.  Battles should not be fought on a battlefield covered in so many insecurities and missing information.  No one knows how Kaiser can even exist here, outside of me, other than me, how he got here and how he remains here and what he intends to do.  No one has any clue, least of all me, what else he could be capable of.  To engage a combat lacking in all of this information is to openly flirt with the destruction that would ensue.  They would lose.

            Hikari is the only one who hasn't moved, hasn't spoken, and though I usually try to avoid her eyes, for once I seek them out.  She's the only one among them with eyes that have seen the Dark Ocean, and I need to know what she sees now.  

            The Child of Light looks troubled and sad, like she feels she should speak up but would never be heard over the sound of the waves.  She says all that she needs to with just her eyes, and all that she needs to say is just that she understands all this.

            She knows they can't fight Kaiser, and she knows I can't let them.

            How nice for at least one thing to be simple.

So I tell them, "I can't."

            Sand settles.

            And the questions explode, a barrage of "can't what" and "why the hell not" and "don't let him boss you around" and "why are you doing this".  Under the noise Kaiser makes one small sound, an amused little hum, and the tips of his fingers brush against my wrist.

            "Somehow you're much less fun and yet so much more delightful when you've learned your lessons," he murmurs to me.  "For being so good, I suppose I'll even let them all go."

            I jerk my hand away and say nothing.      

            "Ken," Daisuke whispers.  "I don't understand."

            _Because you believe in options, Daisuke._

            "I'll be fine," I promise him emptily, because I don't think it could possibly be true.  "I think it has to be this way, if we're ever going to figure out what's going on."

            "I'm not leaving you with him."

            "You're going to have to."

            His eyes narrow and spark, furious and desperate and I can suddenly appreciate why the Kaiser believes he is beautiful in his anger.  Daisuke flares like an avenging sun.

            Burning the desert itself.

"I _won't_!" 

            His digivice begins shining, and Veemon crouches, ready to change and begin a battle that can't possibly bring about any good.  Kaiser smirks and beckons them all to try, and the whip is uncoiled and he's prepared one of his usual silken threats but before it ever meets air, a shaft of light and the dancing rearrangement of data cut through the sky.  

            Both sides, the Children and the Conqueror, halt their actions to see what comes of this, because neither of the digimon, not even Veemon, has begun to change; the display is separate from all that was previously here.

            It finishes, and the new figure smiles grimly toward the Children before turning to Kaiser and I, arching an eyebrow slightly as Kaiser hisses in obvious distaste.  To his credit, it doesn't much seem to faze him.

            "Well," Gennai says finally, "looks like I'm just in time."

It will not be this long before another chapter.  Never again will I allow more than a year pass by.  I bet you no one even reads this anymore, and that's fine, honestly.   You know I had to rewrite the Daisuke section five times?  Graarh.

But anyway, now we see Gennai is here so things might get explained.  That's what Gennai does, he explains things.  And has eleventy million cousins.

On a similar and yet different note, if anyone has seen my muse, Adult Detective Ken, he's been missing for a few months now.  There's a reward.  Please hurry.  Stingmon is so lonely.

The chapter titles for chapter 6, "I stick my hand into his shadow / To pull the pieces from the sand" are from, of course, a Tool song, "Third Eye".  There are a million more where this came from.


	8. Can I Ask a Question

Schism - A quaint adventure in shounen ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Crazed Author's Disclaimer – Someday there will be a revolution and the characters depicted in this fic will rise up against those who own them and join my side, and we will create a glorious new world.  However, until this happens, I own none of them.

Crazed Author's Rant –   Hardest.  Chapter.  EVER.  Gennai hates me.  I'm starting to return the favor.  -_-  All I wanted him to do was explaa~aain!  XD  Here's chapter 7, version 5.2…

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Chapter 7-  To Help me Save me from Myself 

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                The arrival of the Guardian, while affectively throwing the rabble of children into shocked silence, is unfortunate in that it dismantles my plan for the remainder of the afternoon with admirable efficiency.  I had known, of course, that my Ken would choose the path of martyrdom and tell his ridiculous companions and their little animal friends to go, to leave him here with me.  It is a very Ken thing to do; knowing beforehand that he will do it does nothing to dampen the amusement of the situation.  While others may appreciate surprises, I much prefer watching schemes unfold.

            In the most ideal outcome, the little troupe of comedic errors that they are would have simply accepted the matter of it, the truth of it, turned around and went on their merry way.  On the other hand, I would have reveled in the fight that they seemed so willing to instigate, and certainly I would have found pleasure in their defeat. 

            Anyone who has never had a foe pleading before them or limping brokenly away would most likely not understand.  There are certain beauties to confrontation – the greatest would have been watching Ken's face in the aftermath.  

            I am, however, an adaptable sort of villain.  Rigidity will win no wars; tacticians must be flexible if they expect to emerge from the battle triumphant.  At the very least, perhaps the old man and his pathetic excuse for an excuse will amuse me for the span of a moment or two.  

            For those of us forced to deal with a vastly inferior society, there are times when the most one can hope for are moments of entertainment.  Surrounded by idiots and bits of computer data and one supposed Guardian, it may be time to take a more subtle approach.  

            I look to Ken.  Most likely he's trying to gauge what he knows of Gennai from the stories he's heard and apply it to the man he now sees before us, and attempting to shape his mind around what any new outcome could arise from this.  There is shame, too, lurking along the edges of his dark eyes, and I note that his gaze _nearly_ darts to the simmering silent form of Motomiya before it meets my own.  Perhaps he regrets having given up so easily.

            Silly, sweet child.  What else is a submissive to do?  And then it occurs to me the benefit of this new situation - all that Gennai could possibly tell them will be to my advantage.

            Rather nice of him, if unintentional.

"Are you listening, little Ken?"  We can't have him miss the pretty speeches, after all.  His eyes linger on mine a moment more, and I can feel him weighing consequences; I assume he now considers joining his friends, taking advantage of the Guardian's presence to slink back to their throng.  I would have let him; it isn't as though he can ever truly get away from me, after all.  There will _always_ be later opportunities for Ken and I to have our time together, and even if his mind were capable of following that point to where it leads, he will never let himself truly accept it.

            This is part of my power over him.  Ken fools himself, lies to himself, coddles himself with empty desperate reassurances.  Somewhere inside him, he knows this.  On a basic level he understands that he is blinding himself to the truth _I_ would much rather flaunt, and it's one of the reasons he sees me as so indomitable.  Defeat me?  He can't even bring himself to fight me.

            "I would really appreciate an explanation," the older Ishida boy announces with a clearing of this throat.  "Not that I had any other plans for tonight, but I've gotta admit I'd like to know how we have two Kens all of a sudden."

            "_One_ Ken."  Daisuke seems to be trying to set me on fire with his eyes, all the heat of his anger pushed the front and making him tremble.  Rather than catching flame, I believe I'm vaguely aroused.

            "Fine, one Ken," Ishida agrees, tugging fingers through a mop of blonde hair.  "But also one Digimon Kaiser, and that just aint right."

            "I would be happy to explain," Gennai says, taking careful steps closer.  He moves as one would approach a rabid animal – slow, smooth, non-threatening.  I suppose he deserves some amount of credit for believing me to be so dangerous.  Enemies with any level of assessment capability are so rare these days.

            "Ken?"  The Yagami male -Taichi, I believe - takes a single step forward until he is in line with Motomiya; Ishida throws him a small significant glance, and it occurs to me that there is something between those older two beyond what I had previously assumed.  The knowledge is set aside for future use.  Ken looks up with a blink, having gone to some deep internal conflict again.  No wonder he's failing his studies – he has the attention span of a small flighty bird.

            "It's just as well that he stays where he is."  Gennai smiles apologetically to the children.  "If you were about to ask him to go to you, that is."  There are nods; it's just as well, Ken wouldn't have moved.  Gennai is circumventing their asking so that it doesn't come to another denial.  If he insists on being clever, he'll find himself in some rather dangerous territory…

"Why?" Daisuke asks, finally tearing his gaze from my Ken and turning those angry cherry lights to the Guardian instead.  

            "Because if how I understand the situation is close to what it is, the Digimon Kaiser will be harder to be rid of than you all wish, and Ken in particular is going to have to get used to that."  He looks over the group of them, his small smile still in place.  They see his apology, the protective aspect of his commitment to duty.  Only I see his regret, his fault.  Genius, I think, is part the absence of blindness.  "Think now, children.  When you come through the digiport and appear in this world, how does that come to pass?"

            "He wants them to think?" I snort to Ken, intentionally loud.  "We'll be here all night."  He ignores me but for a small twitch of muscle along his forehead.  Precious.

            "The digiport converts our physical bodies into data," The female I recognize as Inoue Miyako cuts in, and for a moment her eyes dart my way.  I give her a patient, bemused little smile, a parent allowing for the clumsy intellect of a child.  She blinks, taken aback, and whatever further information would have come from her mouth dies premature.  The short one, Hida Iori, turns his serious face up toward her in his concern at her sudden stop.  

            "Izzy explained it to us a couple of times."  Yagami shoves his hands into his pockets, alternating his attention between Gennai and the two of us.  "Wasn't it along the lines of becoming digital ourselves?"

            "I suppose that's close enough," and still his weak smile lingers.  "But it isn't so much your body that's necessary for the digital world to create a digital representation of you – it's your mind and soul."

            Inoue looks back to the Guardian after one last peek to Ken.  It occurs to me that Ken has watched her watching him, and through the distorted eyes of his memories it is obvious that she feels deeply for him, and the relationship he holds with Daisuke causes her some amount of pain.  There are so many ways that can be utilized, both to my advantage and for my amusement, that I'm tempted to rearrange my plans in order to accommodate any number of tantalizing situations.  

            The Yagami girl is frowning at me.  Ken has never liked the crimson of her eyes.  I gift her with a feral grin, occupying my hands with the length of my whip, slowly coiling the lax weapon and attaching it to my belt.  She grimaces and looks away, earning a curious glance from the flying orange rodent and prompting a snarl from her feline partner, all for me.  

            "Our mind and soul…" Ishida Takeru looks at his hands in some ridiculously poetic moment that most likely is a prerequisite for being the child of something like Hope.  "These bodies are made from our mind and soul?"

            Gennai dips his head.  "For the most part.  The digiport doesn't quite just replicate your physical body with one made of data, per se; rather, it reacts to the presence of the you that is _not_ physical, and creates a body mirroring your physical self to contain it."

            Ken is listening intently now, the promise of some insight into both the workings of this world and his own predicament having lured him from the safe gauze of withdrawing.  He keeps his eyes on the dunes, however; He's trying very hard indeed to avoid meeting Daisuke's eyes.  

            "Like containers of water."  The Hikari girl speaks her analogy slowly.  "The digiport doesn't use the container, it looks at the water and makes the container appropriate for it."

            "Very much like that," Gennai says, foolishly proud.  I suppress the sudden urge to crush him, welling up from within me like the tide.  A time and place for everything.  Only idiots refuse to learn from the mistakes of their past, and I know better now than to rush in to things merely for the sake of satisfying my urges.  I am devoted to the subtle method for today…

            "That doesn't do anything to explain how the Digimon Kaiser is standing right over there," says the boy who is Hope, glancing my way with obvious trepidation.  The other children echo his confusion, and so many pairs of eyes turn to Ken and I.  The digimon remain silent and thoughtful, perhaps unwilling to venture guesses.  I'd prefer to assume that they've chosen to remain on guard, in the case that I suddenly reveal myself to be as much marauding conqueror as they remember.  

            Ken stiffens; I am graced by the weight of his midnight blue, wide and deep eyes and unsettled by realization.  

Aah.  He has it now, does he?  

            "Ken?"  Gennai seems to have noticed, as well.  "Perhaps you could explain to them what I'm trying to get across."

            He quails, slightly.  Gennai has made the unfortunate mistake of unwittingly pressuring him as well as coming across uncomfortably like Ken's professors.  There is a wall inside him that grows thicker and taller.

            "Shame, Guardian."  Allow myself to slip into his good graces… "You can hardly expect Ken to feel up to such a task as that.  He hasn't even had a moment to come to terms with it, and you want him to lecture the halfwits?"

            He hesitates, realization of his error passing over the angular planes of his face.  Deceptively youthful in appearance, yet not experienced enough.  He cannot win this game with me, but he has committed himself into the playing of it regardless.  He dares to ask, "And I don't suppose _you_ would, then?" 

            "Of course not," I reply, the sliver of a grin.  "Not only do I not give out knowledge to fools, but I refrain out of kindness to _you_."  Lower the pitch, silken the tones.  These people are all instruments I play upon.  "Imagine, Guardian, the _things_ I could let slip to them…"

            The warning is sufficient. Played into the corner, he suffers under the burden.  He will tell them himself, and they will not understand.  The mischievous notion of simply taking off with Ken while they mule and muddle over the details passes through me, but again, a time and place for everything.

            "Ken and Kaiser," Daisuke says, slow like heat spreading through a house.  The others all look to him in slight surprise, the two older boys exchanging another of their weighted glances and the blue Veemon at his feet blinking.  "They're two different people… two different minds.  That's how the digiport saw them."

            Ken raises his head.  There is, no doubt, an achingly tender moment that passes between the two as they meet gazes for the first time since Gennai appeared, and I'm sure that it's fraught with unspoken apology and assurances and remorse and things I've no time for.  

            My patience for the necessity of this meeting is wearing thin.  Reveling over having a physical body again doesn't last quite as long when one spends an inordinate amount of time in the desert.  I suspect the next fear-inspiring outfit I concoct will have short sleeves.

            "How can that be?" Inoue shakes her head, a hand automatically adjusting her glasses as the movement causes them to slip down her nose slightly.  "Ken was the Digimon Kaiser, they've got to be the same person!"

            "I beg to differ," blithely. Ignoring the obvious does her no credit.

            "Miyako's got a point," the Takeru boy says.  "We know Ken and Kaiser _were_ the same person, once.  Can a person split in two like this?"

            "Obviously they can," Yagami Taichi, with a weary snort.  "I'm more wondering about how and why."

            "But wouldn't it be crowded in Ken's head if there's two people in there?" Patamon squeaks.  "They're only made for one!"

            "I think there's a difference between two minds and two brains," the Hawkmon says.  "Perhaps what Daisuke is getting to is that they are two personalities?"

            "That doesn't work out right." Ishida Yamato now, trying his hand at deduction.  "Didn't Ken become the Digimon Kaiser, and all the while was still Ken, and then you helped him become Ken again when he cast the Kaiser role away?  That's not how multiple personalities work."

            Taichi raises an eyebrow, and Yamato shrugs.  "I've been to a therapist or two in my time."

            "But they _are_ two personalities."  Tailmon, inspecting her claws while she speaks.  I could laugh at her.  I could laugh at them all.  Play it subtle, yet I'm alive and I could laugh forever…  "It's the only theory that could make sense.  Somehow the Kaiser personality has become clearer, or stronger, to the point where the digital world recognizes him as a separate person from Ken entirely."

            "So then what happens while he's in the real world?" Iori asks.  "Where does the Kaiser go?"

            "That should be obvious."  I can't help but grin.  At Hida Iori and his stupid serious face, as though he understood anything at all in the world; At the Hikari girl and her wobbly, worried red stare; At the Ishida family, epitomizing the supposedly idiocy of blondes; At Inoue and her cow's eyes, actually ever thinking that she could shine brighter than Daisuke in Ken's vision.

            At Gennai grinding his teeth behind his perfect sad smile, screaming behind his watchful silence.

            "I go where I please."

            At Daisuke, _ever_ burning.

            I grin until I feel my face will tear, rip, split, crack open and the insanity of it all would gush like blood from a wound, like infection, like breath.  I am so alive, and it is life that kills us all.  They are all such _fools_…

            And Ken, my beautiful simpleton with all his broken possibility, shrinking from my touch even as he lacks the will to simply walk away.  Bound to me.  Helplessly part of me, and they can't even _see_.  I grin at him as well, and my fingertips flame with the memory of his cool, smooth skin.  The slender digits of his right hand twitch, and he can't understand the fundamental truth of it, that we are so bound, to the point of being broken.

_And I will **see** him broken._

            It doesn't occur to me that I've said that last bit aloud until Daisuke's fist connects to my face.  

            I can't be bothered to hold back the laughter any longer.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

            For the sake of there maybe possibly being a chance of finding out what the hell is going on, I managed to keep quiet and civil during the whole long and painful crappy ordeal of standing there, just _standing_ there, while Gennai said nothing we all had to guess and Ken looked miserable and lost and Kaiser looked his usual gloating asshole self.  I kept my mouth shut and tried to beat down my temper, cos boy oh BOY was it rising hot, and lemme tell you when I get really mad there's nothing short of a miracle that'll keep me from blowing up.  But no!  For the sake of understanding the problem, I was a good little digidestined and I stood there with Veemon, just listening and watching.

            _Fat_ lot of good that did.  Gennai's still playing secrets (like I don't know when someone's holding back something from me?  I date the master of secrets!), my friends are all confused, Ken's STILL miserable and now I'm joining him because in all the time it took Kaiser and Mr. Guardian to beat around the bush with each other, I figured it out.  One of those epiphany things I've heard about, like a lightbulb over your head but really more like a big board of wood smashing into the _back_ of your head.  

            I wonder if Ken knows, too.  If I figured it out then I'm sure Ken has to know, he's Ken and I'm Daisuke and it's no big news story on who the smarter one of us is.  So he must know.  I wonder if that's why he's so quiet.  I wonder what happened, when it was just the two of them alone here while I burned dinner and went spastic.  

            I know it wasn't good.  I can see the old ghosts in his eyes, his posture, the line of his mouth.  The shadow did more than creep up over him this time, and now something darker and more awful is tugging at his edges.  _We were doing so damn well_…

            And then comes Kaiser and his smirk and his voice and his … his freaky ass seduction skills, and there goes Ken and our progress and his self-esteem and smile.  And here comes Gennai and he's being eaten from the inside by guilt, I know how that looks and I'd know it in a second and he's _got_ it, but he's saying nothing, admitting nothing_, telling us nothing_.  And I'm quiet and civil and BOILING OVER.  That's right folks, NEWS REPORT:  Child of Courage and Friendship about to go Ballistic.  Film at 11, interviews to follow.  But I'm holding it back!  

            And then Kaiser says something about Ken being broken or something, and there's this snap somewhere, loud as a tree branch cracking when it's Fall and the air is cold and dead.  CRACK, only actually it's SNAP, or, no, it may have been SMACK because that's about the sound my fist makes when it collides with Kaiser's cheek.

            I have to say I'm as surprised as he is.  I don't remember punching him, or running forward, or thinking about it, but that's definitely my hand connected to arm leading to my body and it's most definitely just punched Kaiser in the face.  See how I'm still very calm and civil about all of this?  I plan on making everyone very proud of me, you know.

            Taichi catches up to me and grabs my shoulders to haul me back, as though this attack were on purpose or like I was about to do more, which maybe I am, apparently I'm not the one to ask about what my body plans on doing, don't blame me it was my _evil hand_, and the funny thing is Kaiser is just laughing, and laughing, like I had a joke written on my knuckles and he read it right before the hit.  So he's laughing and on the ground because I hit pretty damn good thank you very much, laughing and rolling on the sand and getting it in his stupid spiky hair.  Taichi, right behind my head, mutters something like "screw it" and then he leaps forward, fist ready, but Yamato grabs HIM.  By now all the rest of the guys (and the girls, who by no means should be underestimated in a fight, because Miyako kicks like nobody's business and Hikaru has hard little fists of fury) have caught up and there's all this noise and shouting and limbs flailing, and of course over and under it all is his _goddamn laughing_.

            To the side, through the mess, I see Ken staggering backwards away from both us and the lunatic in the sand.  Gennai starts walking like he's gonna be the one to comfort him, which is almost funny since they're both full of secrets and how is that going to be any comfort at all?  You don't heal with secrets, even if they're more comfortable and look and sound better.  It's _truth_.  Burning, hurtful, awful truth, and then you heal and then it's comfort.  If the Guardian of the Digital World understood that he would have looked us in the eyes.  

            I cut him off, running over the unstable surface and darting in his way before he can do something adultishly stupid, and rather than stop running I let my feet keep going and I give Ken my best soccer tackle.  We go flying, briefly, and rolling, and coughing because I just inhaled like a pound of sand.  Lungs don't like sand, no, they don't.

            He's coughing, too, squeezing his eyes shut as his too-thin body shudders and does that diaphragm-clenchy thingie.  I think he didn't see me coming.  That's okay.  If today is gonna be full of surprises, at least one of them should be me.

            "ENOUGH ALREADY!" like a war horn comes Yamato's yelling, and of course he's got a set of lungs on him, he's a singer after all.  He knows how to project.  The clatter and ruckus stops, the sand settles, the laughing continues but quieter, chortles surrounded by little pained noises.  I wonder who else hit him.  I'd like to shake their hand.

            "Everyone just calm down."  Very authoritative voice.  He's the big brother after all.  "Kaiser, shut the hell up.  Taichi, stop strugg-.. Takeru, don't you _dare_ hit him again!"  A couple mutters and grumbles, quiet words, and the laughing trails off to silence.  I have to guess what's happening by sound alone because I don't think I can afford to look away from Ken right now.  He's still coughing under me where he landed, but I think it's almost over with.  Gennai must be right behind us – I can see his shadow on the sand.  I wish he'd go away.

            "You alright?"  One late cough, and Ken opens his eyes.  I think I hurt him.  His eyes are full of pain.  "Did I slam you too hard?"

            A shake of his head and a very humorless smile.  It's nothing more than lips twisting this time.  "Sand," he manages.  I scoot back a bit in case he wants to sit up, but he just lies back, closing his eyes again.  "Daisuke…"

            "Yeah, Ken."

            "I think I'm losing my mind."  The voice is ragged and quiet.  I want to tell him no, that's hardly the case, you've actually got _two_ now, but I don't think it's really the time for off-color commentary.  

            "You threw him off a first time," I say instead, loading the words with bravado.  "And you know things are always harder the first time.  And now you've got _us_."  

            And now you've got _me_.  Maybe you don't know it's hard for us, too.  We're comrades.  Friends.  Digidestined, Chosen Children.  We're _partners_.  It's like I have three halves (it would go a long way to explain my math grades), and I found one half when I met Veemon and I found the other when you first met my eyes in a _non_-I-think-I'll-you manner.  When you said you were staying with him, it's like I died a little death on the sand.

            He goes still – his breathing slows, and together our hearts reach for calm.  The frantic beating steadies.  After a while he opens his eyes again.

            "I shouldn't have left Wormmon behind," he says.  

            "He'll understand.  We'll go get him soon, anyway."  Though I'm not really sure how he'll react to seeing you-know-who again.  

            "He must be worried sick…" He trails off, gazing at the sky for a moment before looking at me.  "Are you going to get off of me any time soon?"

            "I really don't want to," I sigh, keeping my voice down, "but Mr. Guardian is watching us and it's starting to creep me out."  Shift, move the legs, hop to my feet.  "Need a hand up?"

            He's already getting up, but he shakes head and murmurs no-thank-you as he rises.  We both turn to Gennai, who has been standing a few feet off and, I think, observing the whole time.  He still looks sad and concerned and very much grown up, but there are still things he's choosing not to tell us.  If I find out later that they're important things about how to help Ken, I'll kick him in his soccer balls if you catch my drift.  

            He's not the only one watching, actually.  The ruckus quieted down some time ago, and everyone seems to have turned their heads this way when Ken got up.  Kaiser is still on the sand, but he's sitting up and looks no less an egotistical jerk for the fight, although he's got a few good marks on his chin and cheek and I think his glasses have a crack.  Plus, his hair is a nightmare.  Some people just don't know how to do the wild and spiky look.

            "I'm sorry," Gennai says.  Ken raises an eyebrow, managing to look cool if not collected, although he's looking very mussed and he could really use a shower.  

            "I'm sure that you are," he says back, and without another word walks right past him.  I wonder if he knows that Gennai knows more than what he says he knows, like _I_ know he knows.  Maybe Ken even knows more about what Gennai knows than I know.  Ken sure does know a lot.

            I follow as he makes his way toward the others, and they seem unsure of what to say, standing as they are over his roughed up counterpart.  He smiles for them – small and understanding… _kind_.  _Infinitely_ kind.  Taichi steps up, patting him on the back like Ken was his wayward little brother.  He startles slightly, balance just shy of lost, but nods like a silent thank you.  Yamato makes a weird 'tsk' noise and just about descends onto my boyfriend, dusting off the blazer of his school uniform and trying to shake some of the grains from Ken's disarrayed dark hair.  I can't help but blink at the sight of our two upper-classmen ultimately mother-henning him.  File away under "what the hell did I just see".  

            Hawkmon sighs and lands, and I think maybe he was doing the hover thing for too long and now he's tired.  He and most of the digimon I guess decided to stay back, maybe not wanting to go too near Kaiser despite the fact that I'm sure they all fancy wailing on the guy while he's down.  Veemon's still with them, maybe not wanting to get in the way of my moment with Ken or maybe remembering how he spent an uncomfortable time in the closet.  Miyako looks like she ate something awful, a bit greenish and ragged around the edges.  Hikari already noticed before me because she's all compassionate like that, and has put an arm around the lavender-haired girl's shoulders.  Tailmon looks like she really wants to look indifferent about the whole thing, but the furious little twitch at the end of her tail really says otherwise.  She's upset… worried.  Patamon knows it, because he keeps glancing over at her from the top of Takeru's head.  All of them Ken nods to and walks past, up to Iori next whose standing by Kaiser like a short guard who can really kick ass when he's got a wooden sword.  Or so I hear.  Iori looks his normal solemn self and tilts his solemn face up at Ken and they share one of those solemn moments, up until Armadimon buts his head against Iori's back and he stumbles forward with a "gack!".  Ken steadies him without thinking, and aren't we all just blown away when Iori takes another step forward and _hugs Ken_.  Right there.  Wraps his short arms around his waist and hugs.  

            Who'da thought we'd ever see the day?

            Ken looks adorably surprised and maybe flustered, but then this expression slides onto his face and it's so gentle I could either burst or else shove Iori out of the way so that he's using it to look at ME.  He used to fret and worry about not being worthy of the crest of kindness – if he could only see his own face now.

            And then he does look upon his own face, in a way I guess, because Iori lets go and steps away and Ken turns to look at Kaiser, who just now is finally getting back to his feet.  They stare at each other for a long moment, twins in appearance only.  Or maybe clones, since I think they have the same DNA.  If Kaiser _has_ DNA.  Digi-DNA?  Maybe Koushiro will know.

            And Ken says, "Well."

            And Kaiser says, "Yes."  Gennai raises his eyebrows as they both turn to him, as we all look to him.  

            "Hey," I tell him.  "You were saying something about explanations?"

            "I was," evenly.  "I believe young Iori had asked where the Kaiser goes when Ken is not in the digital world."

            Iori nods, and though Kaiser gains a bit of his smirk back, he seems happy enough to keep his trap shut this time.  Good for him.

            "When he says 'I go where I please', does he mean like that he stays behind here and runs amuck?"  Miyako frowns, not liking that thought at all I guess, and neither do I, but I don't think it's right anyway.

            "No," Gennai answers, shaking his head.  "Kaiser and Ken are still connected in that when Ken passes through the digiport, Kaiser follows, regardless of whether or not Kaiser's digital form chooses to pass through the digiport as well.  When Ken leaves this world for the other, Kaiser simply vanishes."

            "It can't make a body for him in the real world, can it?" Tailmon asks, and her tail does another couple violent flicks.  "Like it does for the digimon such as ourselves."

            "How does that happen, anyway?" Takeru, rubbing his chin.  "The same way that it creates digital bodies for us in this world?"

            "Sort of.  The digiport is a door that swings both ways, you could say."  He settles into his stance, like one of my teachers who gives so many lectures that maybe they only feel comfortable while they're giving them, and teaching is easier than not teaching.  "The two worlds, the real world and the digital world, can almost be said to be overlapping each other.  Those passing through the gate to this world attain digital form, as described earlier.  Similarly, those passing through the gate into _your_ world will need their digital forms converted into the sort of matter that your world is made of.  Digital forms for the digital world, and real forms for your real world."  He clasps his hands behind his back and rocks on his feet slightly, gazing upward.  I think I mostly get what he's saying – the other kids are all nodding along.  Ken looks intent, and Kaiser looks like he knows all this already.  For all I know, he does.

            Gennai's still going.  "The main difference appears in the ability of the two worlds to accommodate what passes through the gate.  As the worlds are overlapped and essentially like mirrors, what exists in one world exists as possibility in the other.  The digimon that exist in the digital world are possibilities in the real world – the digiport is able to make their physical forms out of their possibilities, and the real world accepts them because there was always the chance that they could have existed anyway.  

            "The problem with Ken and Kaiser, however, is this: the digiport is able to make a digital form for Kaiser, because it recognizes his mind as a separate entity from Ken, and is able to write the data that will become his body here.  Going through the digiport the other way, however, there is no 'possibility' of Kaiser for the gate to make a body with in the real world.  That possibility has already been used, and belongs to Ken.  It cannot make two bodies where only one should be, because the real world cannot be written like data."  He blinks slowly, pulling his gaze back toward the lot of us as though to make sure we're still listening, and then turns to Ken and Kaiser.  "Have I gotten that correctly so far?"  

            Ken blinks, and Kaiser develops a slow, slight smile.

            "For the most part", he answers.  "Although some of your logic is patchy, and your assumptions concerning the gate have faults."

            Taichi blinks.  "Wait.  How much of that was just you guessing, Gennai?"

            The Guardian manages to look a little sheepish.  "Maybe about half.  Not bad, huh?"

            The other kids stare at him for a moment, before Yamato and Taichi just start laughing.  I'm thinking hard, trying to take all the stuff Gennai said and turn it into sense, which I guess it makes.  Computers can make duplicates of things, and if this world is data or a program, that can be written and altered and changed.  Copy, paste, copy, paste, edit… But the real world can't make two Kens.  I think that's what he said.  Yeah.  Even if it's not two Kens but a Ken and a Kaiser, it's still the same Ken-body.  Just two personalities.  Right.

            "Which brings us back to the question", Iori, looking tired, "of what happens to Kaiser when Ken goes back to the real world."

            "Now be patient, Iori," Armadimon says in the casual way he does everything.  "I bet Gennai's gonna get to that soon.  Aren't you, Gennai?"

            He hesitates and the wind blows.  "The only place for him _to_ go, children, is where he came from in the first place."

            I feel like a really bad idea that I had today is about to be proved true.  Believe me, I haven't forgotten earlier when Ken-not-Ken straddled me on the floor of my room and made me say the name of someone I'd hoped was long gone.  If Kaiser doesn't get a body in the real world, then when Ken goes to the real world the only place Kaiser can go is, like Gennai says, exactly where Kaiser came from.

            Still smiling his little knowing smile, Kaiser confirms my really bad idea with a single motion, as he reaches up with a gloved hand and gives a light, eloquent little tap to Ken's head.

            Ken closes his eyes, exhaling softly and I can feel his misery leaking out of the cracks of the walls he builds around himself.  In a way, it's how he tells us that it's true, and we all get it, all of us understanding.  Or, maybe all of us except Veemon, who's just gone cross-eyed trying to figure it out.  I'll have to tell him later, I guess.  It's nothing compared to what it'll be like telling Wormmon.  I wonder if I'm going to wake up tomorrow laughing at what a terrible dream I just had.

            But I won't run away from my problems.  It works much better when you just step forward and beat them instead.

            The heavy silence that followed Kaiser's reply hangs for way longer than I would have liked it to.  It'd be the best ever for someone to crack a great joke – we could laugh until it hurt and then we could look at each other and maybe it would be better somehow, because we would know we all still had the power to laugh at least.  No one's laughing now.  No one's smiling.  Everyone has the shame sort shocked awful look that maybe I do.  We can't stand like this all day… especially since it's only day HERE and it's night back at home, and getting late I think… what time was it when we got here?  It was dark out when Ken-not-Ken came to my door…

            Gennai isn't saying anything, like he's waiting for us to snap out of it on our own.  Ken opens his eyes, finally, but he keeps them down on the sand and his hair is casting shadows so I can't quite see what he's feeling, but I can feel a bit of it and I don't like it.  I don't like it one bit.

            "Maybe Ken should stay here, then?"  

            The squeaky little voice is Veemon's, I realize with a start.  He's tugging at my pant leg and gazing up at me with big questions in his eyes and I'm supposed to have the answers for him.  I'm his partner, after all.  I think I underestimated him when I said I'd have to tell him what's going on later – he's figured it out himself while we all stood around.  He just needed the extra moment to really think it through, that's all.

            He's my partner, after all.

            "Why's that, buddy?"  We'll think it through.  No more blind panic or blind reacting.  Fight the mad genius with logic or something.  It sounds like a good enough strategy in my head at least.

            Veemon rubs his chin with a claw, like someone in deep thought.  "Well I wouldn't want someone like the Digimon Kaiser in my head while I was walking around.  I don't think I'd like that at all, really.  If Ken goes back to the real world, then that's what'll happen, so Ken should just stay in the digital world!  Then there's no one in his head but him."

            "That's actually a really good idea."  Hand form fist, face form devil-may-care grin.  I'm the leader of this group, after all; I have to keep my troops in good spirits.  I'm the leader because the goggles say so.  "We can take turns coming here and keeping him company."  And keeping Kaiser off of him.  I have this feeling that we really shouldn't be leaving them alone again.

            "A sound idea", Gennai says.  Yay for his approval.

            "I can come all day tomorrow," Hikari says immediately.  I would have thought Tailmon would hate the idea of hanging around Kaiser all day, but she's nodding like it was her idea.  Maybe it's one of those 'keep your enemies closer' deals.  Either way is fine with me, so long as someone's with him.  It'll only be until we can figure out how to fix this mess but still…

            "I can come tomorrow night," Miyako nods.  "I would be more than happy to.  And I'll bring candy!"

            "I'll come with Hikari."  Takeru, and Patamon nodding in time with him, probably because he's on Takeru's head and has no choice.  Taichi and Yamato smirk at each other and Yamato shrugs.

            "We'll handle covering you guys in the real world," Taichi says.  "I'm getting used to making excuses for sudden disappearances anyway."

            "Tai's full of excuses for late night excursions, too."  Yamato elbows him in the side and I don't think I'm going to think too hard about what that's supposed to mean.  Not that it wouldn't be fine, I mean, because I think I'm sure that sort of stuff goes on anyway and I'm happy for them but this really isn't the time or place to be thinking about ... uhm… 

            Right.

            Iori, I think, was about to say something, but now he's just looking at the two of them quizzically.  Taichi gives an elbow right back, and harder, so that Yamato makes this "oowf!" sound.  Someone snickers.

            We can breathe again.  The grin is easier now, and I turn to Ken to make sure it's reaching him.

            He's smiling, really really faintly but it's there, one of his sweet little sad ones that makes my gut turn over like a sudden dip in the road, and he shakes his head.  His hair is starting to frizz.

            "I can't do that."  It takes me a minute to realize what he's talking about.  Maybe he notices.  "I can't just stay here.  Thank you, though."

            "But Ken - …" I pause and glance at Kaiser, wondering what hand he has in this.  He's put his hands behind his back and is looking up at the sky, like he's not even listening.  My evil hand wants to remind him not to piss me off, but I push that away.  "I don't even think we can guess what it's going to be like…"

            "I think I have a pretty good idea, Daisuke," dryly.  "But I stayed here for months, when I … when Kaiser decided to …" He stops, blinking.  "When we…?"

            "Either of those works, really," Kaiser murmurs.  

            Gennai coughs.  Ken seems to sigh.  

            "Either way… that time, and my parents… I won't put them through that again.  I have to go home – even if it's the harder option, it's the only option I'll allow."

            "You may be the only one among us who understands what this is going to be like," Gennai says to him.  Kaiser raises an eyebrow at his exclusion but says nothing.  I wonder if he's enjoying this – I can't actually remember a time when he wasn't enjoying himself, except for when he freaked out and then he was Ken.  Why should the evil half get to be the happy half?  Life isn't freaking fair, that's why.

            "I'll just learn to deal with it."  Ken works up a smile that he isn't feeling anymore – his heart is going too fast for him to be calm like he's pretending to be.  I guess we all have to wear masks though, like how I'm still grinning and looking like it'll all end up okay.  I'm the leader, right?  That's how I've got to act.  I'm a pretty good leader, though, and an actor too.  I'm almost at the point where I can even fool myself.

            "Then… what do we do now?" Iori asks.  Hawkmon shakes some sand from his feathers; Veemon seems to have gotten some between his toes.

            "I'll go speak with some sources."  Gennai nods to each of us.  "Perhaps one of the elder digimon knows of any other time when a being that didn't have an actual presence in the real world managed to take form in the digital world.  I'll also spread word that, should any digimon spot a certain familiar someone, to not panic and trample him."

            "You can choose to omit that last part."  Miyako smiles sweetly.  Kaiser just raises his eyebrow again and smiles back… less sweet, though, more creepy.

            "Maybe Ken could stay the night at your place, Daisuke?" Taichi nods over at me.  "You two get along so well after all."  

            Yamato coughs into a hand.  I think he actually said something but I didn't hear it and I bet I don't want to know.

            "It's a school day tomorrow." Ken shakes his head.  Just saying the words seems to make him wilt.  He hates going to school so much… why doesn't he just skip?  I mean, hell, if anything "there's a maniac in my head" would be pretty high on the list of good excuses for taking a sick day. 

            Damned if I'm letting him stay alone any more than I have to.

            "I'll stay at your place, then," I say loudly.  "And no arguing allowed."

            Ken blinks.  "But D-.."

            "HEY!  What'd I just say?"

            "But your pa-.."

            "What did I just say??"

            "Then MY parents!"  If Ken were a flailing type of person I bet he'd be flailing right now.  "Daisuke, I won't let you get in trouble over me."

            That deserves a loud snort.  "If not for you, what for?  Anyway, I'll tell your parents that I had a big fight at my house and I don't want to be there cos I'm all emotionally upset or something.  Your parents are big on emotional outbursts, they'll understand."

            "I'm not sure that wi-… what are you implying, there?"

            "He means," Kaiser sighs, "that your family consists entirely of weepy, overly-distraught bleeding hearts who'd believe such a pathetically weak story without batting an eye.  And though I'm sure my opinion means nothing at this juncture, I for one approve of the idea of dear Daisuke spending the evening.  That bed can get _so_ cold sometimes…"

            "_Another_ reason for you not to come."  Ken, flatly.  "Daisuke…"

            "I made up my mind already!"  Man, does he have to be so damn creepy?  "It's your own fault for dating someone stubborn like me!  Let's go, already!  Gotta get out the sleeping bags!"

            "Ah… I'll just be going now," Gennai says from the side, like he really doesn't belong in the conversation anymore, which Wow!  Hey!  He doesn't!  

            I think I'm tired.  All the adrenaline, like the Must Find Ken! Adrenaline followed by the Holy Crap, Kaiser! Adrenaline and then the Evil Hand! Adrenaline has all leaked out and I forgot, here in the sunny sunny desert, that it's nighttime out in the real world and probably getting pretty late at this point.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was getting near to nine.

            I am so grounded.

            But, really, I had this great pair of thoughts while we all got ready to port out, and I looked over at Ken as he was sparing this one last nervous glance toward the Digimon Kaiser (who is just still a creepy, creepy bastard, being all silent and smiley and making me severely worried about this long streak of good behavior) and maybe he felt it because he looked over at me… he just looked so… so _Ken_.

            And the first thought was, this is gonna suck.  This whole big problem, Kaiser and Ken, it's going to really be awful.  It'll be total suck.  Mega suck.  It'll be like … like a SkullGreymon worth of suckage.  And also my parents are going to kill me.

            But the digiport opens and the desert starts to fall from beneath us and he's just so breathtakingly Ken that I have the second thought and it's all okay again.

            Because he's worth anything.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

I hope to hell that made sense.  But!  Finally, we're getting somewhere.  Next chapter brings to us the splendors that a sleep-over with Daisuke can bring, the return of poor neglected Wormmon, and the nightmare that is school nearing finals time.  I wonder if Ken can last through this with sanity intact…

Chapter 7's titles, "Can I Ask a Question / To Help me Save me From Myself", are from the Tool song Diary of a Madman/Lovesong.  I told you, I got a million of these.


	9. So Familiar and Overwhelmingly Warm

Schism - A quaint adventure in shounen ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka

Crazed Author's Disclaimer – Thanks to the South Beach diet, I no longer own any pasta or bread.  Or Digimon characters.  

Crazed Author's Rant –   Doing my best to keep the interval between chapters shorter and shorter.  ^^  I'm apparently going to be on a fanfic panel at an anime convention, so I figure I really ought to … write more fanfics.  Makes sense, yes?  This chapter doesn't really get much done, I feel, but I am happy with how a lot of the interaction worked out.  Big sankyuus to Empress Daiken, New Obsessions, a bunch of other people, and my pre-reader Ace.  

_…………………………………………………………………………………………………_

Chapter 8 – This Form I Hold Now 

_………………………………………………………………………………………………… …_

            I don't know why he insists on coming with me, but any further attempt to stop him and ask would just be pointless.  Daisuke being Daisuke, he would scold me for pressing the matter and then give some incomprehensible and totally illogical reply, perhaps in the form of a meaningless analogy or some catchy phrase he'd make up on the spot.  It happens often that I just have to set aside the misgivings and trust that he'll do whatever he's set his mind to doing, and whether or not it works out there really isn't much on the planet that could have persuaded him into doing otherwise.

            Resistance is futile.

            So comes the here and now, having all of us piled into Daisuke's room through his computer, parting ways with well wishes and waves, my standing by awkwardly as he writes his parents some quick note that with any luck will explain to their satisfaction the fact that their son will not be home on this evening.  My arguments are futile and so I keep them to myself – in this, he will not be moved.

            I wonder if someday I could be so strong.  The last of the other digidestined depart, Miyako clutching Poromon to her chest tight enough to elicit muffled squeaks from the pink creature; Yamato and Takeru (Patamon, as always, on his partner's head) following soon after with a final quick note:

            "If it gets too much, call us.  We'll figure out something, okay?  Just… call us."

            Daisuke assures them that will be the case.  I keep my eyes on the floor, listening to the door gently sweep closed.  

            All is quiet on the Kaiser front.  It worries me even as it relieves me, and I'm not sure which emotion to believe in.

            "I've got all the stuff I need," Daisuke says, touching my shoulder.  As always, his hand is so very warm.  As always, he looks surprised at my coolness.  A duffle bag is slung over his shoulder, recognizable as the one he brings to his soccer games.  I nod.  He makes sure that his note is fully visible on the kitchen counter (a very curious smell lingers in the air, but I choose not to question it, nor the incredible mess in the sink), and together we step into the hallway.  Daisuke locks the door behind us.

            It is nine thirty-seven in the evening, and the streets are dark.

            Odaiba has never been a particularly quiet town, not with its multitude of shopping areas and hangouts and the occasional odd roller coaster or onsen.  The city has a breathing, moving nightlife, but on this night our path is quiet.  We walk through the silence, through warm early summer air, with the glow of the Skywheel and its ever-changing ferris wheel color scheme in our wake.  He doesn't live in this part of town, and taking the train would have been shorter and faster, but somehow wordlessly the Rainbow Bridge seems to have called us.

            So we walk.  Footsteps on asphalt and the hum of electricity and life, punctuated by passing cars; there are no stars out tonight, but the moon is a vague glowing ghost above us.  Daisuke shifts the weight of his duffle bag.  A sneaker scuffs.  Somewhere, someone honks.  It's a long trip by foot, but the air is fresh and the dark sky is endless.

            We walk silent and useless like prayer.  

            At the door to my apartment building we look up at each other.  He smiles, lopsided and sheepish, letting the bag down from his shoulder to flop on the sidewalk (from within it there is a muffled squeak of discontent).

            "Tamachi has such a different air to it," Daisuke says. "You'd hardly think they were sister cities."

            "It's quiet tonight," I reply, hushed.  "As was your town."

            He nods, running a hand through the mahogany juts and spikes of his hair, thoughtful in the soft haze of moon and streetlight.  

            "That's the first thing you've said since the Digital World," he says finally.   

            "I know."  

            "It worries me."

            I smile faintly at that, and tilt my head toward him.  "Then imagine my concern, Daisuke, at you being just as quiet.  You, who never seems to run out of words or stories..."

            "Yeah," with a chuckle.  "I dunno, I guess there was a mood that I didn't wanna break.  It felt sorta… relevant."

            "Reverent?"

            He shrugs.  "Either, I guess."

            "Aah."

            Another few minutes is spent staring at the front door of the building, and it should be creeping toward ten or ten thirty, depending on how much time I've actually lost track of.  I feel very much in control of my senses, which is nothing at all what I was expecting this to be like.  I guess I don't truly know what I _did_ expect, but it wasn't this dead silence.  A soft laugh, a snide remark, maybe even the glimpse of a tyrant at the edges of my perception – but it's as though he was never there to begin with.  Maybe, maybe, he and Gennai were wrong.  Maybe he's been left behind, wandering the Digital World and picking up the pieces from the sand.  I'd like to believe it was all a stupid dream.

            Yet I have the memory of his eyes meeting mine through the tint of his glasses, and the ghosts of his fingertips are still lingering on my skin.  A dream?  As though I could be so lucky.  I only have nightmares, now.

            "So, you ready for the hurricane?" Daisuke asks, reaching down to pick up his bag once again. 

            "Hurricane?"

            "Your folks, Ken."  His brow furrowed, concern evident.  "It is sorta late, and I'm willing to bet Kaiser didn't bother to leave a note or call to let them know you wouldn't be home for dinner."

            I forcibly suppress a shiver that tries to dance down my spine; despite the silence so far, I feel as though I'm walking a very thin line, trying not to disturb a sleeping dragon.  Rather than plead with Daisuke to not ever say his name again (it would only make him press the issue), I muster up a slight shrug and a shamefully feeble smile.

            He stares at me for a long moment, and with a shake of his head enters the building.  I follow a step behind, and we two weary soldiers make our way up to the door of my apartment.

            There is just enough time to open the door, step inside, and take off our shoes before the hurricane strikes.

            "KEN!  Where have you BEEN?"  My mother comes careening around the corner of the kitchen, slippers barely catching hold on the floor as she attempts to change her trajectory.  "I was worried to DEATH, you vanished from your room and then it was time for supper and you didn't come and weren't there and didn't come even after and we thought -- … we thought --…" She takes in a huge gulp of air, trembling all over as strands of her hair distress around her face.  I stand absolutely still, as though if I don't make sudden movements she won't be able to see me.  I don't know what to tell her, and all of the earlier bravado about coming back to the real world in order to not put them through such an ordeal again is leaking away like water.

            "Did you say Ken?" comes my father's voice from down the hall a ways, my father coming right behind it.  He skids to a halt beside my mother and they both stare at me.  I wonder if they think I'll vanish right here and now if they dare look away.  Daisuke is similarly caught in the headlights of the moment – he's got one shoe still half-off and he seems to have forgotten how to close his mouth.  It occurs to me he's likely never seen my parents in their most protective phase.

            "Tadaima", belatedly.  For worrying them again, I even manage a smile.

            My father seems to regain himself first.

            "Ken, you know when you're going to out like that, you need to let us know _where_ you're going, and when you'll be back!"  I wonder if he knows that his face turns shades of mottled red when he's upset.  

            "Uh, it's my fault!" Daisuke leaps in, stepping forward in front of me and waving his arms.  "I had a big fight with my folks.. er.. and I called Ken and he came right over because I was very distraught, and it took until now to .. undistraughtify me." 

            "Undistrau-… what?", my father echoes, clearly lost.  My mother, on the other hand, begins to almost physically ooze maternal protective urges.

            "You had a fight with your parents, you poor thing."  She's wringing her hands together, unsure whether to take him in or send him back, I guess.  "But if it's this late, I don't want to send you back home this late at night, it's dark out there and all…"

            "I'll go back tomorrow," Daisuke says, in a hurry to reassure her.  "These things never last long, and, I … I don't want to make them worry about me too much."

            Ah, the craftiness of he.  Somewhere along our history he must have figured out exactly which strings were the ones to pull when it comes to my parents.  Strange that he should be able to handle them so much better than I.

            "I don't know about this," my father, scratching his chin and rocking back on the heels of his slippers.  "It isn't really our way of things to get involved in the troubles of other families.."

            No, of course not.  Our way of things is to bury all of the problems and keep smiling perfectly on the outside until it rots away and leaves us hollow, leaves us open for other sorts of things to move in and settle.  And meanwhile, she worries and wails, he rages and comforts, and I …

            Well.  _I_.  

            "You can use the lower bunk of Ken's bed."  My mother stands a little straighter, having made her executive decision and prepared to stand behind it.  Her eyes linger on me a moment longer, caught between soft relief and anger; she turns to her husband, mouth set to a firm line.  "And in the morning he'll go back home before school, right dear?"

            Whatever reserve he had left wilts in the face of a determined wife.  It occurs to me that he's usually in bed long before this time, and that he was probably going to stay up until I came home.  How many times did he stay up late while I was the Kaiser, waiting for a son that no longer cared to go home at all?

            Something stirs, somewhere deep; a snake shifting in its coils, lifting lazy-lidded eyes.  I go very still, forcing my mind to go blank as I feel the blood rush from my face.

            Daisuke falters in his grateful babbling to my mother; one hand going to his chest as his heart doubtless goes into overdrive.  I think mine is about to burst through my ribcage.  What a mess that will cause…

            Dark thoughts.  Stop it.  

            _back to sleep, go back to sleep.. oh, please.._

            Silence.  My pulse slows, but the room is much colder now, somehow.  Daisuke plasters his grin back onto his face, his cherry eyes sneaking toward me during the nonsense of it.  It really is poor of me to leave him to face the brunt of her mothering alone.

            "Daisuke is probably very tired, Mama."  Which is a total lie, I don't think he's capable of getting tired; I've never seen it, myself.  Just varying stages of energetic.  "And I've kept you and Papa up too long as it is; I'm sorry.  We'll just go to my room now, alright?"

            My father nods wearily, rubbing at his face as he slouches slightly.  "It is late," he says, "Ken's right.  And, I'm sorry if I came onto you too strong, son; you did right to help out your friend, here.  It's just… I thought it was like last time, happening again…" He trails off, eyes going distant, and without another word turns and walks to the bedroom he and my mother share.  She watches him go, shoulders dropping with a silent sigh, before tearing her gaze from the wake of his passing to look upon the two of us again.

            "You'll call your parents in the morning?" she asks Daisuke quietly, and the smudges of exhaustion below her eyes are suddenly so prominent.

            "Promise," he returns solemnly, and I see his fingers cross behind his back.  He will call them, of course; I think the gesture is meant toward the whole lie in general.  My sweet, silly Daisuke.

            Again, that feeling.  The background fades, the voices and sounds dimming, receding under waves, the colors mute.

            Waves?

            Something hot grabs my hand, and I'm yanked forward as Daisuke's voice cuts through the vision.  Goodnight, he's saying, Thank you, Sorry, Goodnight, and I stumble over my own feet and into my own room, and I realize that his hand is in mine and he's slammed the door shut behind us.

            "Ken," his hands on my shoulders, his face so close to mine that it would only take a small lean and shift, his lips would be so hot because it's so cold here.  

            Here…?

            "_Ken_", again, urgent.  Warm breathe on my face.  Things are starting to focus again, the world bleeding back into colors it rightfully owns.  Daisuke's eyes are large and sharp, making the world bleed.

            "Daisuke," finally, my lips working again, half-numb.  I bring up my hands, press to his chest, burrow them in the folds of his warm shirt.  He moves his hands from my shoulders, down my back, around my waist, and _pulls_.

            Warmth.  The return of the world.  Silence.  My head resting on his shoulder, his arms around me.  We fit so painfully well.

            "This… might be harder than I thought."  Just a whisper to his neck.  He murmurs something, nothing, maybe everything; it's only heat and vibration.  I suppose that's all I need.  He's here, and real, warm and vibrant.  He is, after and over it all, Daisuke.

            "We're being watched," he says, a touch of amusement blotting out the concern in his voice.  Reluctantly I raise my head, eyes adjusting easily to the dark of my room.  From amidst the riot of tousled blanket on the top bunk, enormous blue eyes reflecting what bare light there is, wet and trembling.

            "Ken-chan," he whimpers, crawling an inch further to the edge of the mattress.  "What's wrong?"

            "Wormmon."  I let go of Daisuke's shirt, disengaging from the embrace.  My green little partner crawls forward to the edge of the mattress, peering down at me, mouth slightly open as all the questions he no doubt has hover on the brink of being asked.  

            "I was worried about you," plainly, in a small and wobbly voice.  "You just got this odd look and you left.  Where did you go?" he asks.  

            Daisuke, behind us, quietly opens the door and sneaks outside into the hallway.  Wordless, I reach up for the virus-type, taking him as he pushes forward the few extra inches into my hands.  His eyes close with a sigh; I hold him close to me.  For another few moments, all is right in the world.

            I'm not looking forward to breaking his heart.

            The door clicks closed again – a quick glance over my shoulder shows Daisuke returning, this time with his duffel bag that he had left behind when he pulled me in here.  He shrugs at me with a rakish sort of smile, deft fingers working to loosen the cords of the bag.  More muffled protests emit from it, and Wormmon's antennae perk slightly.

            "Do I hear Chibimon?"  His eyes blink open, searching my face for a moment before darting about the rest of the room.

            "Yeah, you do," Daisuke mutters, reaching through a mess of clothes and fishing around for something.  "You're probably gonna hear a whole lot from his as soon as he gets out of here, too."

            "Daisuke…", warningly.  He grins at me, prying open the bag a bit more and pulling out his digimon by the tail.  Chibimon shakes himself, paws scrambling for purchase and finding instead Daisuke's head, which he latches on to.  There's a sock stuck to his head.

            "You made me ride in the bag," he says.  "I HATE the bag."

            "Tantrum at me later for it; you've got to keep quiet here or Ken's folks'll hear, okay?"

            "Okay, but I'm savin' up the tantrum and it's gonna be huge."

            "I'll deal with it somehow," Daisuke sighs, smile still lurking around the edges of his mouth.  Wormmon squirms a slight bit – I put him down as Dai releases Chibimon to the floor, and they greet each other on the floor; that is to say, Wormmon nods shyly and Chibimon jumps on him with unrestrained glee.

            "Sometimes when Ken brings me to his school, I need to be in a bag," confides the insect.  "And then I stay in a locker.  But it's just something that has to be done sometimes."

            Chibimon giggles, sitting back and wiggling the claws of his feet in front of him idly.  "I know that, but I feel better about it after I make Daisuke feel bad about it.  And anyway, it was dark out and there weren't people hanging around outside, so I don't even know why I had to be in the bag in the first place!"

            "Ken's parents," Daisuke reminds him, poking at his shoulder as he puts the bag in the corner, walking over to the bunk bed and taking a seat on the bottom mattress.  

            "Sure, once we actually got here."

            "Maybe Daisuke and Ken-chan needed some time to talk," Wormmon says, glancing at me from the corner of his eyes.  He wants explanations but he's far too gentle to say as much.  

            "That makes sense," sighs Chibimon.  "They probably had a lot to talk about, too, what with Kaiser being alive and living in Ken's head and all."

            Wormmon goes utterly still, eyes growing huge as his breath audibly catches.  Daisuke starts to shoot to his feet but manages to slam his head on the bottom of the upper bunk instead, falling back onto the bed with pained curses he barely manages to clamp down on in time.  Chibimon guilelessly blinks at the three of us.

            "What'd I say?"

            "Digimon… Kaiser..?"  Minute tremors set into his frame, shaking so slight it can only be seen in the way it makes his antennae shiver.  His mouth pincers gape, and his eyes glaze with a remembered horror that makes me wish I could simply erase the fact I had ever been.

            "Wormmon," I start to say, but the vocabulary all fails me and the comfort dies in my throat.  What could I possibly say to him to make this any better?  He's remembering all of the things I would do to him when I was Kaiser, all of the abuse and mockery and threats, the careless kicks and snide dismissals.  I abandoned him in every way, and he refused to leave me during any of it.  And I, the Digimon Kaiser, sent him to his death.  A history like that doesn't fade, doesn't slip away after the fact like water in a stream.  It's the stain on the rocks, and here I am dashing his hopes and happiness up against them.

            "Aggh.. that _hurt_!" Daisuke, rubbing his head.  "And geez, Chibimon, have a little tact would you?"

            "Was Wormmon not supposed to know?"  The blue vaccine-type tilts his head, waiting for one of us to clear up his confusion.  "That's sorta silly; I mean, he's gonna find out one way or another, right?"

            "This is the sort of thing you really ought to ease in to…" He trails off; from the corner of my vision I see him glance at me, as though asking me what to do now.  I'm trapped staring at Wormmon, waiting to see what he's going to do, waiting to know what I should do, waiting to understand how the world is going to align itself to the change.  

            "Because it's a big shock, you mean," Chibimon says, patting his paralyzed friend nonchalantly.  "I dunno – if it's a shock like a really cold lake, I think it's better to jump in all at once than creep in little by little.  Besides, _we_ all found out all of a sudden, didn't we Daisuke?  Wormmon's just like us!"

            Daisuke buries his head in his hands, and I wonder in a very vague sense if he knows how similar their thought patterns can sometimes be.  Perhaps that's true of all partners; it would explain the way my Wormmon and I seem to angst rather endlessly.

            He lowers his head, antennae drooping.  The tremors have resided, at least.

            I don't know what to say, aside from what I forever tell him within my own self.

            "I'm sorry."

            He shakes his head no, expelling a heavy sigh before looking up with sad, clear eyes.  

            "Ken-chan, I'm sorry too.  If I had been able to help you better than I did, maybe this wouldn't-…"

            "_Don't_ say that."  He blinks at the interruption; I take great care to soften my voice, kneeling on the carpet before him.  "You've always been the best thing in my life, Wormmon; this isn't in any way your fault.  I think… I don't know what I think," admitted sheepishly, and it hurts to do so.  "I don't know what I'm doing wrong, why he won't just be gone and done with, but I know it isn't you.  You're what's _right_ about me."

            "And Daisuke too," Chibimon quips in.  Daisuke shushes him, sounding a bit embarrassed.  I have to smile.  "He's whole bunches of right."

            "And Daisuke, too.  That's true, Chibimon."

            Wormmon inches forward, a certain light of trust and absolute unconditional love in the blue of his eyes.  Wordless I offer him my arms, and silent he settles into them.  The clean, gentle scent of him, like the purifying smoke at temples, comforts my senses.  As with Daisuke he is warm - as with Daisuke he fits perfectly with me.

            "It's going to turn out alright," whispered delicately into the air.  "Ken-chan, it will this time.  I _promise_ I'll make it right."

            There is no possible right reply for that, in this situation that is neither good nor right.  Instead of wasting sincerity or breath on emptiness, I let the moment pass: kneeling on the floor, holding an insect that still whispers promises he has no ability to keep.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

            I'm real careful to be absolutely quiet during the minutes or so that Ken spends on the floor with Wormmon, and I make sure that Chibimon doesn't spoil their mood either, with a supremely effective technique I call stuffing his mouth sock.  After the tender moments all passed and we got the two beds set up and changed into our PJs and crawled underneath our respective covers, he lets me know in an almost scary sort of voice that between the sock and the bag he's now in a very grumpy way, and to expect lots of pokey claws during the night.

            Fa~antastic.

            He understands why I did it, though, and he probably would have kept quiet even without the help of a balled up hank of foot-cotton, but that's just me and how I overreact to things.  Hell, if Ken's Mom had come to the door with a tray of hot cocoa, I would have stuffed one in _her_ mouth, too.  Shortly after that I'd be grounded for life, and by my next parents in my next life for the rest of THAT life.  It reminds me that I'm really happy Ken's Mom didn't come to the door, although I do really like cocoa.

            Ken's room is weird.  In my room in my house when you turn off the lights, the light is gone.  It's black.  You can close your eyes and then open them and there really isn't much difference, because I have superior window shades and my wall faces away from the majority of the city.  Here, though, he's only got those stripey kind of blinds that don't block all the streetlight, so when you turn off the lights it all goes kinda gray instead.  I feel bad about that because Ken hates gray.

            Chibimon makes these funny noises when he sleeps.  I can't really describe them right, but he's curled up on the pillow next to my head (and I'm being real sure to keep those claws away from my face, because he can get revenge even while sleeping if he tries) and when he exhales he sort of snores but it sounds like "weeeb".  Sort of.  From the top bunk I can hear Wormmon sleeping, he makes a wheezy, nasal, light little snore.  I wonder if all digimon snore.  Maybe their digi-nasal passages need work.

            Ken doesn't snore.  When Ken sleeps he's quiet like the dead.  He hardly ever moves, too, unless he's having a dream.  He's fallen asleep on me a couple of times, when he hang out together for lazy days at the park or in the digital world, when there's no one around and he lets his guard down enough.  I love that he can relax that much with me.  There's nothing really like your boyfriend dozing off on your lap.  Since he doesn't snore, though, it's hard to tell if he's asleep or not; whether he's lying there staring upward like me, wondering, or if he's already gone to dreaming somewhere other than this stale gray room.

            I have a very clever way of finding out, though.  There's only a bare little mattress between us, after all, and all I really need to do is take my finger like so and start poking at the part of it that slopes down, signifying that Ken is there.  Just like this.  Poke poke poke.  Pooooke.  Poke poke po-..

            "Daisuke", from the upper bunk, with maybe half the tired exasperation I was expecting.  "What do you want?"

            "Are you awake?"

            "… I've just spoken to you, Daisuke.  Yes.  I'm awake.  Do you need something?"

            "Nah," I say in a whisper, stretching out my legs until the toes and knees pop.  "I just wanna talk."

            The bedframe creaks slightly; I can hear him shift and rearrange his blanket.  "You always want to talk," with a touch of his dry humor.  

            "I dunno, maybe.  Are you okay up there?"

            "… We'll wake Wormmon.  Just go to sleep."

            Color me suspicious here, but I think he's avoiding the conversation.  There was a little bit more pause after my question than there should have been, and the raspy wheeze of Wormmon's snoring continues.  Chibimon is out like a light.  No, I don't think that's what he's worried about…

            "I can't sleep.  Can you?"  

            "… No, actually, I can't.  Someone keeps talking to me just as I get close."

            "That must be annoying."  I grin, poking at the large lump in the mattress that seems to be Ken.  "Maybe you should humor them so they'll shut up."

            He sighs and the bed creaks again as he pulls himself to the edge of the bed, peering down at me with tired eyes.  They're his "I'm not amused right now" eyes, and my studies in Ichijouji 101 would tell me to back off for now, but I need to make sure he's okay before that happens.  I want to make sure I'm the only one talking to him in the gray darkness.

            "Fine," he says.  His hair is the darkest thing in the room.  "I'm humoring you.  What are we talking about?"

            "Why are you so cranky?"

            "I haven't really had the best of days," in a tone so dry it sucks the moisture from the air and I'm thirsty now.  "Maybe you'd noticed."

            "Any day I spend with you is a good day."  For extra effect I make my eyebrows go up and down a couple of times and grin like a loonie.  He likes this grin sometimes.  

            Ken stares for a little bit, then shakes his head slowly from side and side and his head vanishes from the scene as he pulls himself back onto his bunk.  I listen to him shift around and try to picture it in my head.  I try to picture him settling down for a nice happy sleep with no worries.  I'm a dreamer like that, I guess.

            He's the next one to say anything, which is a very good sign, and his voice is soft and sort of … just _tired_.  "I really do thank you for doing this," he says.  "And I'm sorry you'll be in trouble for it.  I almost wish you didn't insist on coming."

            "Almost?"

            "… Mmn.  I'm … glad you're here."

            "Then so am I.  I'll deal with the parental backlash.  I mean, I haven't done anything to get them mad in a while, so they oughta know they're about due."

            He makes a little noise that could be a laugh and could be a sigh – it's hard to tell without being able to see him.  Come to think of, though, it really has been a while since I've gotten the old parental units up in a tizzy.  I must be turning into some sort of good kid, and that's while I'm saving a whole other mirror world on the side.  I am just far too cool to be real sometimes.

            On the other hand I guess my folks can be pretty cool too.  Even though the note said "please don't call his house, his folks go to bed crazy early and they get mad at him when the phone rings", I was worried and wondering that maybe they'd call up anyway to double check my "Ken's family is angsting again and I'm gonna spend the night to help him stay sane."  It wasn't _all_ a lie.  

            "You know you're not coming to school with me tomorrow, yes?"  Ken says eventually.  I resist the urge to poke at his shape again.  

            "I know that.  I wouldn't want to go to your school anyway.  Your school's _crazy_."

            "Any academic establishment will in time take on the afflictions of his students."  He yawns; the bed creaks.  Wormmon's snoring halts as he murmurs some nonsense things and both Ken and I fall silent for the time it takes for the little guy's wheezy sleep to continue.

            "I don't think you should go either."  Chibimon is still snoring – he needs one of those pictures of a saw sawing into a log.  It takes like a train wreck to wake him up.  "It's not good for you, because it's all pressure and social bullshit, and you weren't up to it then and you sure as hell aren't up to it now.  It's not good for you."

            "I really haven't got a choice, Daisuke.  This late in the semester, with all of the final exams coming up?  I can't afford to miss classes now.  Summer break is in a few weeks – I'll bear with it until then."  He yawns through his next sentence, "I always have anyway", and I've got my Protective Boyfriend frown on.  Pity he can't see this one, it's impressive.

            "Will you at least take Wormmon?"

            "He won't be of much moral support from the locker," dryly.  "He'd only be miserable sitting in there and waiting; you heard him.  It's even worse, apparently, than the bag."

            I sigh extra loud so that he knows I'm sighing and knows that I want him to know.  "I don't want you to be alone, is all…"

            His chuckle at that is maybe a little bit broken.  "Daisuke," he says, soft.  "I don't believe I'll be alone for a long time yet…"

            That one takes a moment, and when I get it I grit my teeth.

            "You mean Kaiser."

            A twitch from the upper bunk.  "Don't… say his name, please.  It seems to attract attention."

            "Huh?"  What, are we distracting him from his television he's got tucked away in brain space or something?

            "I don't exactly know why," he says.  "He's here, that much I'm aware of… but it's as though he's … dozing.  He hasn't-…"

            Footsteps in the hallway a moment after he hushes, and I close my eyes and strain my ears.  The pair of slippers, whoever they are, scuff by the door and pause.  The doorknob clicks softly.  I do my best "innocent boy sleeping" act, you know: mouth a little bit open, face lax, little 'poofs' of breathe.  I hope she thinks Chibimon's snoring is coming from me, too.  Now that I think of it, considering the sound Wormmon is making they probably think Ken has some sort of breathing problem, like that deviated septic whatever that kid in my homeroom was always complaining about.

            I wonder how often they come and peek into the room, like some night they'll take a look and Ken'll be gone.  It's happened to them a couple of times already, so I can't really blame them for the paranoia.  But I still wonder.

            A second click as the door closes, and the slippers shuffle back down the hallway toward where his parents sleep.  I open my eyes again but it's still quiet.  I wonder if he's gone to sleep.  I guess it's possible, he was awful tired and the only thing probably keeping him awake has been my jabbering, though if I recall correctly he's been having crappy dreams so maybe I'm doing him a favor.  Not that sleep deprivation has ever been considered a good thing in any case.  I dunno.  Maybe he's sleeping, because he's not moving at all.  There's one great way of finding out.

            "Please don't start poking me again," Ken says, a quiet and low mutter that sounds half into a pillow.  My finger stops.  Denied.  Oh well.  

            "So you're awake?"

            "We've been over this.  My speaking to you is an indication of my wakefulness."

            "I like to doublecheck.  Some people talk in their sleep."  It's true, too.  Jun does.  She says all sorts of potentially embarrassing things about boys – lately, about boys named Yamato.  To that I can only say "ick", and I don't know how she doesn't notice that he and Taichi are so much a thing that it's like Yamato could never be a part of another thing.   Because he's already in a thing.  Maybe it's because she doesn't know Taichi.  Or maybe it's because Yamato's in a band.  Chicks lose their brain for band guys.  I seem to fall for the brainy types, which I think makes me much less shallow.  Take that, Jun.

            He replies with a hum.  I think he's drifting.

            "Ken?"

            Another hum.

            "You were talking about someone that has a name I'm not going to say because he's dozing?"

            "… Oh.  I was.  Do you remember what I was saying?"  Shift, rustle, creak.  Wormmon's wheezing and Chibimon's childlike sighs and _weeweeb_.  I think back.

            "You said it's like he's tired and dozing, and then you said he hadn't done something, and then you stopped cos I think it was your mom."  He must be more tired than I thought to have to ask.  "What hasn't he done?"

            "Anything, really," and another yawn tacked to the last word.  "Not a word, just a few stirrings.  I think the transition through the gate disorients him."

            "Maybe he's just sleeping?  I mean, he had a sort of busy day too."

            "Mmm… I think it's the gate, still.  I had a similar problem when I went through to the Digital World."

            Whoa, wait, that's news.  "You had a problem in the Digital World?  Aside from the big one that looks just like you, I mean?"

            "It was hard to think for a while.  Foggy, maybe.  Like the whole world was wrapped in gauze.  Sluggish."  His voice is trailing off at the edges, weighted down.  Sluggish, which is ironic.  I want to hear more, but he should get some sleep, since he'll have early class that's gonna suck, and no one should have to face suck on too little sleep.

            "Hey, Ken?"  His reply is a half-there hum, so I keep going before he goes completely.  "Go to sleep, okay?  I'm done talking for now."

            "Mmn.. g'nite, Daisuke."  All slurred and far too cute.  I suppose his mom would have a heart attack if she came in in the morning and found me curled up there with him.  Damnit.  If only heart attacks weren't bad.

            "Ken?"

            Not even a hum this time, not a noise beside Wormmon and Chibimon and the electric hum of the city.  He sleeps like the dead, after all.  I guess it's just me in this room now.  That's okay; I'll say it anyway.  

"I love you…"

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

            I always wake up just a few moments before the alarm clock, and despite the ordeal of last night this morning seems to be no different.  Of course I'm tired, but as always it's a thing I'm prepared to deal with.  If Daisuke believes he's the only one of us who doesn't want me to go to school, he's very mistaken, but telling him as much would give him more ammunition in his argument.  It's difficult to convince myself to begin with.

            Detangling the sheets from my legs with quiet care, I lower down from the upper bunk to the floor, stretching out the sleep from my limbs.  I slept surprisingly well, once my ridiculous new roommate actually let me sleep at all.  There were no dreams to be had.  I'd like to be a romantic and tell myself they were driven away by the rhythm of his breathing.  Romanticism has never hurt anyone, I tell myself, though it is a horrible blatant lie.

            The alarm clock is silenced before it can begin; there's no reason to wake up if he can get a few more hours or so in.  I gather up my school uniform and clean underthings, opening the door with the silent practice of those who don't want to be heard or bothered.  The shaft of hallway light that enters the room illuminates the edges of his hair, which seems to be a splatter of dark on a white pillow.  

            I dress myself in the bathroom, sparing only a glance for the self in the mirror to assess the damage.  Bruises under the eyes, skin paler than my normal (which equates to roughly translucent for other people), and hair an unholy riot.  That, at least, I can fix, and washing my face and brushing my teeth even makes me feel nearly human again.

            I think there was still sand in my mouth.  I know plenty fell out of my hair when I combed it.  I'll have to change my bedding.

            My mother is awake, judging from the sounds in the kitchen.  In another ten minutes or so my father will exit his room ready for work, and we will take separate trains to our respective hells.  This, I suppose, is growing up.

            Creeping back into my room, because my school things are in there and I'll have to leave Daisuke a note of some sort.  This time, Wormmon is awake.  He watches me from the top bunk, eyes sleepy but shining.  I think even if there were no source of light, they would still reflect all of the emotion that his little body can hold; no mean feat, as he has at least twice as much as I do.

            "School?" he says in his smallest voice, antennae perking slightly.  I nod, glancing around for my bag and finding it rather haphazardly thrown into the closet.  I suppose it's good to know that my other self isn't going to wreck my room, though he could be more careful with my things.

            "I'll be back after three," I whisper, taking a loose leaf of paper from a folder and a pen from my desk.  "You'll be alright?"  He nods, gaze never lifting from me.  "Good.  Tell Daisuke thank you for me, could you?"

            "Okay, Ken-chan."

            "Thank you."  I smile for him, finishing the note and placing it rather obviously on the center of the computer desk.  It's brief, but it serves its purpose, saying only that I've gone ahead to school and decided to let him sleep in as he'll need his energy to deal with his situation at home (safe enough terms in case my mother should happen upon it as well).  It ends with a simple enough suggestion that we get together once I'm out of classes, and a side-note that he's lucky to have finished his summer semester before I have.  

            Another downside to going to an institute for the academic elite.

            Fastening the bag closed and lifting it over my shoulder, I do as I do each morning I leave Wormmon behind – I step closer to the bed and raise my hand to him, and he places his head to my fingers with a soft sigh.

            "Please be okay," he pleads in a tiny voice.  "Ken-chan, please…"

            "I'll do my best," I assure him.  "Maybe ask Daisuke if you can spend time with him and Chibimon when they wake?"

            "I want to wait for you here," hesitantly.  "So I'll know when you're home."

            I can't help but smile.  "And the waiting would be miserable.  I'll send him a message on his D3 when I'm out of class, and you'll know even sooner than if you'd have had to wait for me to come here."  Massaging in light circles along the base of his antennae, and he really doesn't have the heart to fight both logic and what he knows he'd rather do.  

            "I'll ask," he says.  "I hope he says yes…"

            Careful not to laugh, I give him one final pat and shake my head.  "It's Daisuke; of course he'll say yes."  As though anyone could say no to those huge sad eyes, least of all Motomiya Daisuke and his compassionate heart, especially once Chibimon starts badgering him to agree as I know he will.

            I linger in the doorway, enough time to cast a glance back into the room.  The sun is rising behind the shades, erasing the grays with somewhat friendlier shadows.  Nothing would make me happier than to stay.

            It isn't until I close the door behind me that I let the smile slip; though it was genuine, it was regrettably short lived.  Such is the way of smiles.

            "I'll do my best", I told him, and he took it as a positive statement.  Wormmon is, after all, an eternal sort of optimist.  I've been doing my best my whole life, though, and it's yet to be good enough… not for the academy, not for the public, not for my parents… not for anyone but him or Daisuke.  Certainly not good enough for myself, and a laughable effort to one such as the Kaiser.  I'll do my best, though at its greatest it's only blowing fragile bubbles into a terrible wind.

            What else is there to do?

_………………………………………………………………………………………………… …_

I suppose this proves to me that if I know where I'm going and sit down and make myself do it, these chapters don't have to take so long coming, do they.  ^^;;  Actually, they still surprise me.  For instance, Daisuke was not supposed to have a pov part in this chapter – I'd planned on making it all Ken, since he had _no_ say last time.  I suppose I ought to know better than to think Dai would keep quiet, though, especially by now, which is not to say I'm not grateful for his winding random paragraphs about seemingly nothing.  XD  They do wonders for my wordcount…

As always, lovies, your input is invaluable…

"_So familiar and overwhelmingly warm / (This one,) This form I hold now_" is from Tool's Parabol.


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